But it was not so easy for him to begin after her straightforward order to do so. She kept her brown eyes fixed unswervingly on him the whole time, as if defying him to tell anything but the utterest truth. He paused, stammered, and then laughed uncomfortably. "There's a lot to tell you, and it's not easy." "Then don't trouble. I'm not asking you to." "But I want to." She said, averting her eyes from him for a moment: "It's not really that you want to begin yourself, it's that you want _me_ to begin, isn't it?" Then he said: "Yes, I wanted you to begin if you would. I wanted you to ask me a question you used to ask me?" "What's that?" "Whether I'm happy ... or not. I always used to say yes, and since that answer has become untrue you've never asked me the question." "Perhaps because I knew the answer had become untrue." "You knew? You _knew_! Tell me, what did you know? What do you know now?" She said, with a curious change in the quality of her voice: "My dear man, I _know_. I understand you. Haven't you found out that? I know, I've known for a long time that you haven't been happy." Suddenly he was in the thick of confession to her. He was saying, almost wildly, in his eagerness: "Helen and I--we don't get on well together." Then he stopped, and a wild, ecstatic fear of what he was doing rose suddenly to panic-point and then was lulled away by Clare's eternally calm eyes. "She doesn't understand me--in fact--I don't really think we either of us understand the other." "No?" she said, interrogatively, and he shook his head slowly and replied: "I think that perhaps explains--chiefly--why I am unhappy. We--Helen and I--we don't know quite what--what to do with each other. Do you know what I mean? We don't exactly quarrel. It's more that we try so hard to be kind that--that it hurts us. We are cruel to each other.... Oh, not actually, you know, but in a sort of secret inside way.... Oh, Clare, Clare, the truth of it is, I can't bear her, and she can't bear me!" "Perhaps I know what you mean. But she loves you?" "Oh, yes, she loves me." "And you love her?" He looked her straight in the eyes and slowly shook his head. "I used to. But I don't now. It's awful--awful--but it's the honest truth." It seemed to him that his confession had reached the vital crest and that all else would be easy and natural now that he had achieved thus far. He went on: "Clare, I've tried to make myself think I love her. I've tried all methods to be happy with her. I've given in to her in little matters and big matters to try to make her happy, I've isolated myself from other people just to please her, I've offered anything--_everything_ to give her the chance of making me love her as I used to! But it's not been a bit of use." "Of course it hasn't." "Why of course?" "Because you can't love anybody by trying. Any more than you can stop loving anybody by trying... Do you know, I've never met anybody who's enraged me as much as you have."