"Sense," he repeated. "It is sense, to have what one wants, if it doesn't harm anything or anyone. And I'll tell you another thing--not having it is rotting me up altogether--me and my work. I didn't want to fall in love again; I hoped I'd done with all that; I tried not to take any notice of you. But it was no go, and I can't fall out again, and I'm dead sick of going on like this. And my experience of life, both private and public, has been longer than yours, and, as it happens, I've known of several transactions which haven't come to light and never will; I've perpetrated some myself in the Ministry, which even that clear light which beats upon a hotel hasn't yet exposed, and, heaven helping us, won't. You don't suppose all the dark secrets of the war ever came out? Of course they didn't. There are some that will wait till ... well, till the next war, let's say.... Kitty, let's try it. It's worth the risk, surely. Let's be sporting. We're missing--we're missing the best thing in the world, just out of funk. I thought you always did things, just for the sake of doing them. I thought you never turned your back on life. It isn't like you." "Oh," murmured Kitty. "Life.... There's so much of that. This is just one thing out of it." "While you want it," he returned, indubitably correct as to this, "it seems a long way the most important thing." "It does," she agreed. "There's no comparison at all.... It's queer, isn't it, how strong it is, this odd, desperate wanting of one person out of all the world. It's an extraordinary, enormously strong thing.... But there _are_ other things. There are jokes, and shops, and music, and plays, and pictures, and nice clothes, and Russian politics, and absurd people, and Greek poetry, and the world's failures caged together on one island, and things to eat and to drink, and our careers, and primroses in woods, and the censor.... Good gracious, it's all like an idiotic, glorified revue. We mustn't let the one thing, just because it matters most, matter alone. It's so commonplace. Our hearts aren't broken, and won't break. We're out to have a good time, and we'll let love and marriage go to the--anywhere they like, if we can't have them.... By the way, if it's any comfort to you (it is to me) I shouldn't make at all a good wife; I'm much nicer as a friend. I want too much out of life. I'm grasping and selfish. You'd find me tiring." "I do," he returned. "You're tiring me to death now. I've plenty of friends already, thank you. And what does it matter to me what sort of a wife you'd make? You talk as if you were refusing a secretarial appointment. I want _you_, not a wife." "You've got me," said Kitty, "only not as a wife.... If that's no use to you, we'll give it up. Nicky, I suppose we'd _better_ give it up. It isn't working. I'll go right away. I'll get another job."