Connie considered this. “It isn’t true,” she said. “Men can love women and talk to them. I don’t see how they can love them without talking, and being friendly and intimate. How can they?”

“Well,” he said, “I don’t know. What’s the use of my generalising? I only know my own case. I like women, but I don’t desire them. I like talking to them; but talking to them, though it makes me intimate in one direction, sets me poles apart from them as far as kissing is concerned. So there you are! But don’t take me as a general example, probably I’m just a special case: one of the men who like women, but don’t love women, and even hate them if they force me into a pretence of love, or an entangled appearance.”

“But doesn’t it make you sad?”