there were doubts--not altogether without
justification--of the sweetness of my temper.

II

Well, these general explanations will enable the reader to understand
the distressful times we two had together when presently I began to feel
on a footing with Marion and to fumble conversationally for the mind and
the wonderful passion I felt, obstinately and stupidity, must be in her.
I think she thought me the maddest of sane men; "clever," in fact,
which at Smithie's was, I suppose, the next thing to insanity, a word
intimating incomprehensible and incalculable motives.... She could be
shocked at anything, she misunderstood everything, and her weapon was
a sulky silence that knitted her brows, spoilt her mouth and robbed her
face of beauty. "Well, if we can't agree, I don't see why you should
go on talking," she used to say. That would always enrage me beyond
measure. Or, "I'm afraid I'm not clever enough to understand that."

Silly little people! I see it all now, but then I was no older than
she and I couldn't see anything but that Marion, for some inexplicable
reason, wouldn't come alive.

We would contrive semi-surreptitious walks on Sunday, and part
speechless with the anger of indefinable offences. Poor Marion! The
things I tried to put before her, my fermenting ideas about theology,
about Socialism, about aesthetics--the very words appalled her, gave her
the faint chill of approaching impropriety, the terror of a very present
intellectual impossibility. Then by an enormous effort I would suppress
myself for a time and continue a talk that made her happy, about
Smithie's brother, about the new girl who had come to the workroom,
about the house we would presently live in. But there we differed
a little. I wanted to be accessible to St. Paul's or Cannon Street
Station, and she had set her mind quite resolutely upon Eating.... It
wasn't by any means quarreling all the time, you understand. She liked
me to play the lover "nicely"; she liked the effect of going about--we
had lunches, we went to Earl's Court, to Kew, to theatres and concerts,
but not often to concerts, because, though Marion "liked" music,
she didn't like "too much of it," to picture shows--and there was a
nonsensical sort of babytalk I picked up--I forget where now--that
became a mighty peacemaker.

Her worst offence for me was an occasional excursion into the Smithie
style of dressing, debased West Kensington. For she had no sense at all
of her own