It gives me a kind of detestation--"
She pulled up short.
Oh but he wanted to hear. "Detestation of what?"
"Of everything--of life."
"Ah that's too much," he laughed--"or too little!"
"Too little, precisely"--she was eager. "What I hate is myself--
when I think that one has to take so much, to be happy, out of the
lives of others, and that one isn't happy even then. One does it
to cheat one's self and to stop one's mouth--but that's only at the
best for a little. The wretched self is always there, always
making one somehow a fresh anxiety. What it comes to is that it's
not, that it's never, a happiness, any happiness at all, to TAKE.
The only safe thing is to give. It's what plays you least false."
Interesting, touching, strikingly sincere as she let these things
come from her, she yet puzzled and troubled him--so fine was the
quaver of her quietness. He felt what he had felt before with her,
that there was always more behind what she showed, and more and
more again behind that. "You know so, at least," she added, "where
you are!"
"YOU ought to know it indeed then; for isn't what you've been
giving exactly what has brought us together this way? You've been
making, as I've so fully let you know I've felt," Strether said,
"the most precious present I've ever seen made, and if you can't
sit down peacefully on that performance you ARE, no doubt, born to
torment yourself.
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