But there's no cynical twist about the thing, it is very easily explained. One can't be dogmatic about the state of love, except just to say that it is full of profoundly logical contradictions. For, however serious you may be about your passions, you (you and I, I mean; not odd people) cannot for ever go on plaguing a woman who is not only so insensible to your attractions that she marries some one else, but is actually happy with him when married. A belated sense of humour must come to your rescue eventually, to point in a tired sort of way at the rather ludicrous figure you cut to yourself, fussing about with a passion that is of no earthly use to any one. Anyway, it stands to reason that the appalling certainty of her happiness must inevitably draw something from the fire of your love, so that it fades and fades--unless, of course, you are a minor poet and worried with your own sense of superiority and sonnets, in which case you will write to her a cycle of the latter explaining the former, and choosing, if possible, a date in another world when your bodies (both of which have caused _you_ so much trouble) shall be rotten. No: an unhappy love such as I speak of must be fed so that it can continue; and, if by nothing positive, by what more acutely fed than by her unhappiness? So, since it came about that Iris was unhappy, that sufficiently explains my persistent love for her. But its exaggeration? How can I hope to give any reason for that, but in my own fatuity? How trivial it seems merely to say that there were moments, in that second year of her marriage, when Iris gave me an acute sense of nearness, of almost physical nearness; as though, in our destined journey, we were every day nearing a point where the road would be so narrow that perforce we must touch, where she and I would at last have to face each other in a complete moment.... Not, however, that I knew anything of Iris's unhappiness for some time--it had not outlasted her honeymoon, and yet her best friend knew nothing of it for many months! Simply because, of course, it is always the most tiresome of one's friends who confide in one.... Had I suspected that she might be unhappy I might have expected it sooner. But, as it was, that first year of their marriage seemed to confirm every hope one had for its success. A vivid, crowded year it was--for Roger did do things supremely well! The original Poole money had not been quite negligible, but from all one heard "the present baronet" must have more than trebled it by lucky speculation (of course there must always be those who slur away the "s" from that word) and gambling; and his wife had brought him a considerable dowry. So that he could and did let himself go, and indulged his passion for entertaining in every sense in which that wretched word can possibly rob people of their sleep.