He tried again. "One seems to start in life," he said, "expecting something. And it doesn't happen. And it doesn't matter. One starts with ideas that things are good and things are bad--and it hasn't much relation to what _is_ good and what is bad. I've always been the skeptaceous sort, and it's always seemed rot to me to pretend we know good from evil. It's just what I've _never_ done. No Adam's apple stuck in _my_ throat, ma'am. I don't own to it." He reflected. "I set fire to a house--once." The fat woman started. "I don't feel sorry for it. I don't believe it was a bad thing to do--any more than burning a toy like I did once when I was a baby. I nearly killed myself with a razor. Who hasn't?--anyhow gone as far as thinking of it? Most of my time I've been half dreaming. I married like a dream almost. I've never really planned my life or set out to live. I happened; things happened to me. It's so with everyone. Jim couldn't help himself. I shot at him and tried to kill him. I dropped the gun and he got it. He very nearly had me. I wasn't a second too soon--ducking.... Awkward--that night was.... M'mm.... But I don't blame him--come to that. Only I don't see what it's all up to.... "Like children playing about in a nursery. Hurt themselves at times.... "There's something that doesn't mind us," he resumed presently. "It isn't what we try to get that we get, it isn't the good we think we do is good. What makes us happy isn't our trying, what makes others happy isn't our trying. There's a sort of character people like and stand up for and a sort they won't. You got to work it out and take the consequences.... Miriam was always trying." "Who was Miriam?" asked the fat woman. "No one you know. But she used to go about with her brows knit trying not to do whatever she wanted to do--if ever she did want to do anything--" He lost himself. "You can't help being fat," said the fat woman after a pause, trying to get up to his thoughts. "_You_ can't," said Mr. Polly. "It helps and it hinders." "Like my upside down way of talking." "The magistrates wouldn't '_ave_ kept on the license to me if I 'adn't been fat...." "Then what have we done," said Mr. Polly, "to get an evening like this? Lord! look at it!" He sent his arm round the great curve of the sky. "If I was a nigger or an Italian I should come out here and sing. I whistle sometimes, but bless you, it's singing I've got in my mind. Sometimes I think I live for sunsets." "I don't see that it does you any good always looking at sunsets like you do," said the fat woman. "Nor me. But I do. Sunsets and things I was made to like." "They don't 'elp you," said the fat woman thoughtfully. "Who cares?" said Mr. Polly. A deeper strain had come to the fat woman. "You got to die some day," she said.