All one's energy goes to facing it, to tracking it.

One wants, confound it, don't you see ?" he confessed with a queer face--"one wants to enjoy anything so rare.

Call it then life"-- he puzzled it out--"call it poor dear old life simply that springs the surprise.

Nothing alters the fact that the surprise is paralysing, or at any rate engrossing--all, practically, hang it, that one sees, that one CAN see." Her silences were never barren, nor even dull.

"Is that what you've written home ?" He tossed it off.