ur desire has been
granted. But you're not really different from women like myself. Crises
come to all of us, when life grows desperate--when to be alone becomes
intolerable: when everything, even one's pleasures, becomes a burden,
because they are unshared. Such a crisis would have come to you sooner
or later in any event. It comes to every unmarried man and woman. The
war only happened to be the means of bringing home to you your
loneliness. When it broke, you didn't have time to choose; you seized on
Terry, because she was young and pretty and susceptible. You were
terrified by the calamity of being blotted out before you had known
love. You forgot that there's a worse calamity--and that's being
compelled to live forever with a person for whom you have ceased to
care. A man like yourself can have any woman he likes, only any woman
wouldn't suit. She would have to be unusual--of a high type like
yourself. Such women are rare. The thought of Terry attracts you because
a marriage with her would seem to halve your years. But why should you
want to halve your years? To have lived ought to mean that you have
gained experience, which is the most dearly purchased form of knowledge.
Why should you be ashamed of it and so anxious to be rid of it? You
purchased your experience with blood. It's the most valuable of all
your possessions. And if you were to marry Terry, what could she
contribute? A pretty face, an unbroken body and all the intolerance of
her youth. A pretty face doesn't go far in matrimony. Husbands soon get
used to mere prettiness and learn to look behind it for character. A
wife, in order to be your friend, would have to be your equal in her
understanding of suffering. How much suffering has a girl like Terry
had?"

He wasn't angry. He wasn't even offended. What she had been saying had
so clarified his thoughts that it had been as if he had been thinking
aloud. Her voice was a dark mirror, glancing into which he had
recognized himself. His self-knowledge carried him far beyond any
arguments of hers. He sat perfectly still with a face of iron, gazing
straight before him.

What he had mistaken for chivalry and romance had been nothing but
foolishness. He had been enacting the unwisdom of an infatuated boy with
the solemnity of a mature man. His clamor had been unprofitable,
undignified, absurd--on a level with the amorous hysterics of Grand
Opera, save that it had lacked the redeeming storm of contending music.