“Marise, I’m afraid that you have to fight for what you want to keep in this world.  I don’t see any way out of it.  And I don’t believe that anybody else can do your fighting for you.  You ask if it’s not possible to have beautiful, intimate things spoiled by questioning, criticisms, doubts.  Yes, I do think it is, for young people, who haven’t learned anything of life at first hand.  I think they ought to be protected till they have been able to accumulate some actual experience of life.  That’s the only weapon for self-defense anybody can have, what he has learned of life, himself.  Young people are apt to believe what older people tell them about life, because they don’t know anything about it, yet, themselves, and I think you ought to be careful what is questioned in their presence.  But I don’t see that mature people ought to be protected unless you want to keep them childish, as women used to be kept.  Nothing is your own, if you haven’t made it so, and kept it so.”

“But, Neale, it’s so sickeningly hard!  Why do it?  Why, when everything seems all right, pry into the deep and hidden roots of things?  I don’t want to think about the possibility of some dreadful dry-rot happening to married people’s feelings towards each other, as they get older and get used to each other.  It’s soiling to my imagination.  What’s the use?”

She had so hoped he would help her to sweep them all back to the cellar labeled “morbid” and lock them down in the dark again.  Any other man would, she thought, amazed at him, any other husband!  She focussed all her personality passionately to force him to answer as she wished.

He fell into another thoughtful silence, glanced up at her once sharply and looked down again.  She always felt afraid of him when he looked like that.  No, not afraid of him, but of the relentless thing he was going to say.  Presently he said it.  “What’s the use?  Why, the very fact you seem afraid of it . . .  I can’t imagine why . . . shows there would be some use.  To turn your back on anything you’re afraid of, that’s fatal, always.  It springs on you from behind.”

She cried out to him in a sudden anguish that was beyond her control, “But suppose you face it and still it springs!”

Her aspect, her accent, her shaken voice gave him a great start.  He faced her.  He looked at her as though he saw her for the first time that day.  And he grew very pale as he looked.  Something wordless passed between them.  Now he knew at last what she was afraid of.

But he did not flinch.  He said desperately, in a harsh voice, “You have to take what comes to you in life,” and was grimly silent.

Then with a gesture as though to put away something incredible, approaching him, he went on more quietly, “But my experience is that it doesn’t dare spring if you walk right up to it.  Generally you find you’re less afraid of everything in the world, after that.”