“There you are, that’s one of your words. It really has no meaning as far as I am concerned.”

“Then that is to say you’re not happy.”

Aggressively she replied, “My life suits me splendidly.”

Work, going out, brief encounters: it seems an arid sort of an existence to me. She has rough ways, spurts of impatience—not only with me—that seem to betray a conflict. This is certainly my fault too, this refusal of love: my sentimentality sickened her, and she has warped herself in trying not to be like me. There is something stiff, almost unpleasing, about her ways. She has introduced some of the men she knows and I have been struck by her attitude with them—always on the watch, remote, hard; there is no mirth in her laughter.