"Ah, that's doubtless the best way and the firm ground. And you mean you're _not_ thoroughly pleased with Mrs. Server?" "No--and yet I want to be kind to her. Therefore what's the matter?" "Oh, if it's what's the matter with _you_ you ask me, that extends the question. If you want to be kind to her, you get on with her, as we were saying, quite enough for my argument. And isn't the matter also, after all," I demanded, "that you simply feel she desires you to be kind?" "She does that." And he looked at me as with the sense of drawing from me, for his relief, some greater help than I was as yet conscious of the courage to offer. "It _is_ that she desires me. She likes it. And the extraordinary thing is that _I_ like it." "And why in the world shouldn't you?" "Because she terrifies me. She has something to hide." "But, my dear man," I asked with a gaiety singularly out of relation to the small secret thrill produced in me by these words--"my dear man, what woman who's worth anything hasn't?" "Yes, but there are different ways. What _she_ tries for is this false appearance of happiness." I weighed it. "But isn't that the best thing?" "It's terrible to have to keep it up." "Ah, but if you don't _for_ her? If it all comes on herself?" "It doesn't," Guy Brissenden presently said. "I do--'for' her--help to keep it up." And then, still unexpectedly to me, came out the rest of his confession. "I want to--I try to; that's what I mean by being kind to her, and by the gratitude with which she takes it. One feels that one doesn't want her to break down." It was on this--from the poignant touch in it--that I at last felt I had burnt my ships and didn't care how much I showed I was with him. "Oh, but she won't. You must keep her going." He stood a little with a thumb in each pocket of his trousers, and his melancholy eyes ranging far over my head--over the tops of the highest trees. "Who am _I_ to keep people going?" "Why, you're just the man. Aren't you happy?" He still ranged the tree-tops. "Yes." "Well, then, you belong to the useful class. You've the wherewithal to give. It's the happy people who should help the others." He had, in the same attitude, another pause. "It's easy for _you_ to talk!" "Because I'm not happy?" It made him bring his eyes again down to me. "I think you're a little so now at my expense." I shook my head reassuringly. "It doesn't cost you anything if--as I confess to it now--I do to some extent understand." "That's more, then, than--after talking of it this way with you--I feel that _I_ do!"