CHAPTER THE THIRD ~~ THE BREAKING POINT

went back to his earlier point. “If I am rhetorical, at any rate it's a living feeling behind it. Yes, I remember all the implications of our aims—very splendid, very remote. But just now it's rather like offering to give a freezing man the sunlit Himalayas from end to end in return for his camp-fire. When you talk of me and my jolly mistress, it isn't fair. That misrepresents everything. I'm not going out of this—for delights. That's the sort of thing men like Snuffles and Keyhole imagine—that excites them! When I think of the things these creatures think! Ugh! But YOU know better? You know that physical passion that burns like a fire—ends clean. I'm going for love, Britten—if I sinned for passion. I'm going, Britten, because when I saw her the other day she HURT me. She hurt me damnably, Britten.... I've been a cold man—I've led a rhetorical life—you hit me with that word!—I put things in a windy way, I know, but what has got hold of me at last is her pain. She's ill. Don't you understand? She's a sick thing—a weak thing. She's no more a goddess than I'm a god.... I'm not in love with her now; I'm RAW with love for her. I feel like a man that's been flayed. I have been flayed.... You don't begin to imagine the sort of helpless solicitude.... She's not going to do things easily; she's ill. Her courage fails.... It's hard to put things when one isn't rhetorical, but it's this, Britten—there are distresses that matter more than all the delights or achievements in the world.... I made her what she is—as I never made Margaret. I've made her—I've broken her.... I'm