"No, I wanted fresh air. I don't know what I wanted. Why should I know?"
"But we must know: especially when other people will be hurt," said she.
"Ah, well! A breath of fresh air, by myself. I felt forced to feel—I feel if I go back home now, I shall be forced—forced to love—or care—or something."
"Perhaps you wanted more than your wife could give you," she said.
"Perhaps less. She's made up her mind she loves me, and she's not going to let me off."
"Did you never love her?" said Josephine.
"Oh, yes. I shall never love anybody else. But I'm damned if I want to be a lover any more. To her or to anybody. That's the top and bottom of it. I don't want to care, when care isn't in me. And I'm not going to be forced to it."
The fat, aproned French waiter was hovering near. Josephine let him remove the plates and the empty bottle.
"Have more wine," she said to Aaron. "Do?"
But he refused. She liked him because of his dead-level indifference to his surroundings. French waiters and foreign food—he noticed them in his quick, amiable-looking fashion—but he was indifferent. Josephine was piqued. She wanted to pierce this amiable aloofness of his.
She ordered coffee and brandies.
"But you don't want to get away from everything, do you? I myself feel so lost sometimes—so dreadfully alone: not in a silly sentimental fashion, because men keep telling me they love me, don't you know. But my life seems alone, for some reason—"
"Haven't you got relations?" he said.
"No one, now mother is dead. Nothing nearer than aunts and cousins in America. I suppose I shall see them all again one day. But they hardly count over here."
"Why don't you get married?" he said. "How old are you?"
"I'm twenty-five. How old are you?"
"Thirty-three."
"You might almost be any age.—I don't know why I don't get married. In a way, I hate earning my own living—yet I go on—and I like my work—"
"What are you doing now?"
"I'm painting scenery for a new play—rather fun—I enjoy it. But I often wonder what will become of me."
"In what way?"
She was almost affronted.
"What becomes of me? Oh, I don't know. And it doesn't matter, not to anybody but myself."
"What becomes of anybody, anyhow? We live till we die. What do you want?"
"Why, I keep saying I want to get married and feel sure of something. But I don't know—I feel dreadful sometimes—as if every minute would be the last. I keep going on and on—I don't know what for—and It keeps going on and on—goodness knows what it's all for."
"You shouldn't bother yourself," he said. "You should just let it go on and on—"
"But I must bother," she said. "I must think and feel—"
"You've no occasion," he said.
"How—?" she said, with a sudden grunting, unhappy laugh. Then she lit a cigarette.
"No," she said. "What I should really like more than anything would be an end of the world. I wish the world would come to an end."
He laughed, and poured his drops of brandy down his throat.
"It won't, for wishing," he said.
"No, that's the awful part of it. It'll just go on and on—Doesn't it make you feel you'd go mad?"
He looked at her and shook his head.
"You see it doesn't concern me," he said. "So long as I can float by myself."
"But are you satisfied!" she cried.
"I like being by myself—I hate feeling and caring, and being forced into it. I want to be left alone—"
"You aren't very polite to your hostess of the evening," she said, laughing a bit miserably.
"Oh, we're all right," he said. "You know what I mean—"
"You like your own company? Do you?—Sometimes I think I'm nothing when I'm alone. Sometimes I think I surely must be nothing—nothingness."
He shook his head.
"No," he said. "No. I only want to left alone."
"Not to have anything to do with anybody?" she queried ironically.
"Not to any extent."
She watched him—and then she bubbled with a laugh.
"I think you're funny," she said. "You don't mind?"
"No—why—It's just as you see it.—Jim Bricknell's a rare comic, to my eye."
"Oh, him!—no, not actually. He's self-conscious and selfish and hysterical. It isn't a bit funny after a while."
"I only know what I've seen," said Aaron. "You'd both of you like a bloody revolution, though."
"Yes. Only when it came he wouldn't be there."
"Would you?"
"Yes, indeed I would. I would give everything to be in it. I'd give heaven and earth for a great big upheaval—and then darkness."
"Perhaps you'll get it, when you die," said Aaron.
"Oh, but I don't want to die and leave all this standing. I hate it so."
"Why do you?"
"But don't you?"
"No, it doesn't really bother me."
"It makes me feel I can't live."
"I can't see that."
"But you always disagree with one!" said Josephine. "How do you like Lilly? What do you think of him?"
"He seems sharp," said Aaron.
"But he's more than sharp."
"Oh, yes! He's got his finger in most pies."
"And doesn't like the plums in any of them," said Josephine tartly.
"What does he do?"
"Writes—stories and plays."
"And makes it pay?"
"Hardly at all.—They want us to go. Shall we?" She rose from the table. The waiter handed her her cloak, and they went out into the blowy dark night. She folded her wrap round her, and hurried forward with short, sharp steps. There was a certain Parisian chic and mincingness about her, even in her walk: but underneath, a striding, savage suggestion as if she could leg it in great strides, like some savage squaw.
Aaron pressed his bowler hat down on his brow.
"Would you rather take a bus?" she said in a high voice, because of the wind.
"I'd rather walk."
"So would I."
They hurried across the Charing Cross Road, where great buses rolled and rocked, crammed with people. Her heels clicked sharply on the pavement, as they walked east. They crossed Holborn, and passed the Museum. And neither of them said anything.
When they came to the corner, she held out her hand.
"Look!" she said. "Don't come any further: don't trouble."
"I'll walk round with you: unless you'd rather not."
"No—But do you