'You sound as if you're in love with her.'
'Do you think so?' he said almost eagerly; he couldn't help regarding her mark as a compliment - one that he'd been needing for a long time, too.
'Yes. Your attitude measures up to the two requirements of love. You want to go to bed with her and can't, and you don't know her very well. Ignorance of the other person topped up with deprivation, Jim. You fit the formula allright, and what's more you want to go on fitting it. The old hopeless passion, isn't it? There are no two doubts about that, as Cecil used to say before I broke him of it.'
' That is rather adolescent, isn't it? If you don't mind me saying so.'
'Yes, it is, isn't it? Have you got a cigarette, Jim?... Thanks. Yes I was quite sure when I was about fifteen that that was the way things worked, only nobody could afford to admit it.'
'Well there you are then.'
'Yes, here I am now. I don't mind telling you, since I have been rather letting my hair down, after the maturity of my twenties was over I began going back to that way of explaining things with a good relief. And justification, I'd like to think, too. I'm rather keen on that formula these days, as a matter of fact.'
'Are you?'
'I certainly am, Jim. You'll find that marriage is a good short cut to the truth. No, not quite that. A way of doubling back to the truth. Another thing you' ll find is that the years of illusion aren't those of adolescence, as the grown-ups try to tell us; they're the ones immediately after it, say the middle twenties, the false maturity if you like, when you first get thoroughly embroiled in things and lose your head. Your age, by the way Jim. That's when you first realize that sex is important to other people besides yourself. A discovery like that can't help knocking you off balance for a time."
Sayfa 124Kitabı okudu
·
61 görüntüleme
Yorum yapabilmeniz için giriş yapmanız gerekmektedir.