They were really disputing about Helen's character, and Terence was trying to explain why it was that she annoyed him so much sometimes.
But St. John thought that they were saying things which they did not want him to hear, and was led to think of his own isolation.
These people were happy, and in some ways he despised them for being made happy so simply, and in other ways he envied them.
He was much more remarkable than they were, but he was not happy.
People never liked him; he doubted sometimes whether even Helen liked him. To be simple, to be able to say simply what one felt, without the terrific self-consciousness which possessed him, and showed him his own face and words perpetually in a mirror, that would be worth almost any other gift, for it made one happy.
Happiness, happiness, what was happiness? He was never happy.
He saw too clearly the little vices and deceits and flaws of life, and, seeing them, it seemed to him honest to take notice of them. That was the reason, no doubt, why people generally disliked him, and complained that he was heartless and bitter.
Certainly they never told him the things he wanted to be told, that he was nice and kind, and that they liked him. But it was true that half the sharp things that he said about them were said because he was unhappy or hurt himself. But he admitted that he had very seldom told any one that he cared for them, and when he had been demonstrative, he had generally regretted it afterwards.
His feelings about Terence and Rachel were so complicated that he had never yet been able to bring himself to say that he was glad that they were going to be married. He saw their faults so clearly, and the inferior nature of a great deal of their feeling for each other, and he expected that their love would not last.
He looked at them again, and, very strangely, for he was so used to thinking that he seldom saw anything, the look of them filled him with a simple emotion of affection in which there were some traces of pity also. What, after all, did people's faults matter in comparison with what was good in them? He resolved that he would now tell them what he felt. He quickened his pace and came up with them just as they reached the corner where the lane joined the main road.
They stood still and began to laugh at him, and to ask him whether the gastric juices--but he stopped them and began to speak very quickly and stiffly.
"D'you remember the morning after the dance?" he demanded.
"It was here we sat, and you talked nonsense, and Rachel made little heaps of stones. I, on the other hand, had the whole meaning of life revealed to me in a flash." He paused for a second, and drew his lips together in a tight little purse. "Love," he said.
"It seems to me to explain everything. So, on the whole, I'm very glad that you two are going to be married." He then turned round abruptly, without looking at them, and walked back to the villa. He felt both exalted and ashamed of himself for having thus said what he felt.
Probably they were laughing at him, probably they thought him a fool, and, after all, had he really said what he felt?
It was true that they laughed when he was gone; but the dispute about Helen which had become rather sharp, ceased, and they became peaceful and friendly.
