tness I have always seemed to myself to be most remote from
reality.

2

I look back now across the detaching intervention of sixteen crowded
years, critically and I fancy almost impartially, to those beginnings
of my married life. I try to recall something near to their proper order
the developing phases of relationship. I am struck most of all by the
immense unpremeditated, generous-spirited insincerities upon which
Margaret and I were building.

It seems to me that here I have to tell perhaps the commonest experience
of all among married educated people, the deliberate, shy, complex
effort to fill the yawning gaps in temperament as they appear, the
sustained, failing attempt to bridge abysses, level barriers, evade
violent pressures. I have come these latter years of my life to believe
that it is possible for a man and woman to be absolutely real with one
another, to stand naked souled to each other, unashamed and unafraid,
because of the natural all-glorifying love between them. It is possible
to love and be loved untroubling, as a bird flies through the air. But
it is a rare and intricate chance that brings two people within sight of
that essential union, and for the majority marriage must adjust itself
on other terms. Most coupled people never really look at one another.
They look a little away to preconceived ideas. And each from the first
days of love-making HIDES from the other, is afraid of disappointing,
afraid of offending, afraid of discoveries in either sense. They build
not solidly upon the rock of truth, but upon arches and pillars and
queer provisional supports that are needed to make a common foundation,
and below in the imprisoned darknesses, below the fine fabric they
sustain together begins for each of them a cavernous hidden life. Down
there things may be prowling that scarce ever peep out to consciousness
except in the grey half-light of sleepless nights, passions that flash
out for an instant in an angry glance and are seen no more, starved
victims and beautiful dreams bricked up to die. For the most of us there
is no jail delivery of those inner depths, and the life above goes on to
its honourable end.

I have told how I loved Margaret and how I came to marry her. Perhaps
already unintentionally I have indicated the quality of the injustice
our marriage did us both. There was no kindred between us and no
understanding. We were drawn to one another by the unlikeness of our
quality, by