Page 272 - tender-is-the-night

you quite sure you’ve been in a real battle?’
‘Look at me!’ she cried furiously.
‘You’ve suffered, but many women suffered before they
mistook themselves for men.’ It was becoming an argument
and he retreated. ‘In any case you mustn’t confuse a single
failure with a final defeat.’
She sneered. ‘Beautiful words,’ and the phrase transpir-
ing up through the crust of pain humbled him.
‘We would like to go into the true reasons that brought
you here—‘ he began but she interrupted.
‘I am here as a symbol of something. I thought perhaps
you would know what it was.’
‘You are sick,’ he said mechanically.
‘Then what was it I had almost found?’
‘A greater sickness.’
‘That’s all?’
‘That’s all.’ With disgust he heard himself lying, but here
and now the vastness of the subject could only be com-
pressed into a lie. ‘Outside of that there’s only confusion and
chaos. I won’t lecture to you—we have too acute a realization
of your physical suffering. But it’s only by meeting the prob-
lems of every day, no matter how trifling and boring they
seem, that you can make things drop back into place again.
After that—perhaps you’ll be able again to examine—‘
He had slowed up to avoid the inevitable end of his
thought: ‘—the frontiers of consciousness.’ The frontiers
that artists must explore were not for her, ever. She was fine-
spun, inbred— eventually she might find rest in some quiet
mysticism. Exploration was for those with a measure of

272 Tender is the Night