§9
The perplexing thing about life is the irresoluble complexity of reality, of things and relations alike. Nothing is simple. Every wrong done has a certain justice in it, and every good deed has dregs of evil. As for us, young still, and still without self-knowledge, we sounded a hundred discordant notes in the harsh jangle of that shock. We were furiously angry with each other, tender with each other, callously selfish, generously self-sacrificing.
I remember Marion saying innumerable detached things that didn't hang together one with another, that contradicted one another, that were nevertheless all in their places profoundly true and sincere. I see them now as so many vain experiments in her effort to apprehend the crumpled confusions of our complex moral landslip. Some I found irritating beyond measure. I answered her—sometimes quite abominably.
"Of course," she would say again and again, "my life has been a failure."
"I've besieged you for three years," I would retort, "asking it not to be. You've done as you pleased. If I've turned away at last"
Or again she would revive all the stresses before our marriage.
"How you must hate me! I made you wait. Well, now—I suppose you have your revenge."
"Revenge!" I echoed.
Then she would try over the aspects of our new separated lives.
"I ought to earn my own living," she would insist. "I want to be quite independent. I've always hated London. Perhaps I shall try a poultry farm and bees.
