You're not sorry you made the ordinary career impossible for yourself?" "Sorry?" said René, puzzled. "It was never a thing to be sorry about or glad about. It just happened and I felt better. And now I have met you and everything is changed again. I didn't go to my home last night." "No?" "I went to an old friend of mine who lives happily and contentedly. I wanted to see happiness and contentment. Somehow you had made me sure of myself, and I felt that everything was changed. But the change was in myself. In nearly everybody I have been more conscious of the things they lack than of the things they have. I had been bolstering myself up with contempt--for myself as well as everything else. It was that or being sorry for myself. Always a struggle. I can't see it clearly yet: like righting without weapons and without a cause. I had no desire to live irregularly and uncomfortably or to come in conflict with accepted opinion as to conduct. But I don't see why opinion should be antagonistic to a man's private affairs. I wasn't antagonistic. I was only doing confusedly what I felt very clearly and had always felt to be right. I feel certain now that I ought to have done so long before. I'd like to explain that to all sorts of people, except that honestly I can't take much interest in it. I had a vague sickening feeling that the end of the world had come, but that was only because I could not see an inch before me. The end of the world did not come, neither for me nor for--her. It seems stupid to be explaining all this to you. I know you will not think I am excusing myself, because I am sure you accept me as I am----" "Theoretically," said Cathleen, looking up at him with a quick smile. "You see, I have lived on theory, not my own, either; Lotta's. And I don't know whether my theory can hold out against your practice, any more than my sentimental girlish fictions could. You upset them, you know, and you are just as disconcerting as ever. Shall you go on with your work?" "I can't think of anything else I should like so well." "And that girl?" "That's what we have both been thinking about all the time." "Yes." Cathleen rose and walked over to the window and looked out. She stood then for so long that René followed her and laid his hand on her shoulder. The window gave on to a row of back gardens with a few trees, black and bare. Opposite was a lighted window through which could be seen four girls sewing--stitch, stitch, stitch. "I have often watched them," said Cathleen, "and wondered what might be in their lives. Desire? Religion? Love? What is it makes it possible for them to work so mechanically and so happily." "Fun," said René. "They want fun, spiced with the risk of having to pay for it." "Is she like that?" "She was. But there is something more." "There would be," said Cathleen. "She couldn't love you without being moved out of herself and the habits of her class. That is why I am sorry for her. Are you going back to her?"