"Recently?"
"Over a year ago was the last time."
"And why not since?"
He shook his head and did not answer for a moment. And then, with the
same odd suddenness, he added: "I don't want you to misunderstand....
She gave up writing to me--no doubt--because I gave up answering her."
"Why did you?"
"Because--I _couldn't_ answer. The letters she wrote were the sort I
didn't know _how_ to answer."
The orchestra struck up again, and we walked stealthily away through the
trees. It seemed to me that the opportunity had arrived for saying a
good deal that I had intended to say some time or other. I told him
outright that I thought he was in great danger of making a hash of his
life. "Still?" he said; and the word was an answer to everything. I said
that perhaps I had put the matter a shade too tragically, although,
undoubtedly, it was serious. He was, to be quite frank about it, working
too hard. "I don't care," I said, "how important your work is; there are
two things you ought never to sacrifice to it--friendship and
recreation."
"Well?"
The word was disconcerting. "Of course, I know it isn't any of my
business, but still--you _are_ working too hard--you _must_ realize
that. Why don't you take a holiday--a month, say--and come to England?
My landlady could easily put you up."
He shook his head. It was good of me, he said, but he couldn't possibly
manage it. He couldn't leave his work, and besides that, there were
other reasons. It would cost too much, for one thing.... And then (with
a sudden agitation of voice) why _should_ he go to England? What was
there in England for him?
"I'm only suggesting a holiday," I said.
He said that he had no time for holidays, and that if he had he wouldn't
think of wasting four days of them in travelling to England and back.
I let myself go when he said that. I told him that it was absurd to say
that he had no time for holidays--that a man _must_ have time for
holidays, unless he wants to kill himself from overwork. "And this
extraordinary work of yours--which might be a sort of conjuring trick
from the way you're bound to secrecy about it----"
I let myself go for five minutes, and then, for less than one minute he
did just the opposite of letting himself go; he spoke very slowly and
quietly, weighing up each word as he uttered it. "It's no good," he
said, "thinking like that. You don't understand anything about my
work.... You don't understand how I've given myself to it. I must give
myself to something.... I _must_--always--and that's what you don't
understand."
"But I _do_ understand it," I answered. "It's simply that I don't agree
with it. I say that you oughtn't to give yourself like that.... It would
be a good thing if you were married, for then your wife wouldn't let
you."