Tarr now saw at once what had happened. His good words had been lost, all except his confession to a weakness for the matronly blandishments of Matrimony. He had an access of stupid, brief, and blatant laughter. As people have wondered what was at the core of the world, basing their speculations on what deepest things occasionally emerge, with violence, at its holes, so Bertha often conjectured what might be at the heart of Tarr. Laughter was the most apparently central substance that, to her knowledge, had incontrollably appeared. She had often heard _grondements_, grumblings, quite literally, and seen unpleasant lights, belonging, she knew, to other categories of matter. But they never broke cover. At present this gaiety was interpreted as proof that she had been right. There was nothing in what he had said. It had been only one of his bad fits of rebellion. But laughter Tarr felt was retrogression. Laughter must be given up. He must in some way, for both their sakes, lay at once the foundations of an ending. For a few minutes he played with the idea of affecting her weapons. Perhaps it was not only impossible to overcome, but even to approach, or to be said to be on the same field with, this peculiar amazon, without such uniformity of engines of attack or defence. Should not he get himself a mask like hers at once, and follow suit with some emphatic sentence? He stared uncertainly at her. Then he sprang to his feet. He intended, as far as he could see beyond this passionate movement (for he must give himself up to the mood, of course) to pace the room. But his violence jerked out of him a shout of laughter. He went stamping about the floor roaring with reluctant mirth. It would not come out properly, too, except the first outburst. “Ay. That’s right! Go on! Go on!” Bertha’s patient irony seemed to gibe. This laughter left him vexed with himself, like a fit of tears. “Humour and pathos are such near twins, that Humour may be exactly described as the most feminine attribute of man, and the only one of which women show hardly any trace! Jokes are like snuff, a slatternly habit,” said Tarr to Butcher once, “whereas tragedy (and tears) is like tobacco, much drier and cleaner. Comedy being always the embryo of Tragedy, the directer nature weeps. Women are of course directer than men. But they have not the same resources.” Butcher blinked. He thought of his resources, and remembered his inclination to tears. * * * * * Tarr’s disgust at this electric rush of sound made him turn it on her. He was now put at a fresh disadvantage. How could he ever succeed in making Bertha believe that a person who laughed immoderately meant what he said? Under the shadow of this laugh all his ensuing acts or words must toil, discredited in advance. Desperately ignoring accidents, he went back beyond his first explosion, and attacked its cause—indicting Bertha, more or less, as responsible for the disturbance.