"What pleasure do I get out of life?" And in that single abrupt
question (to which there is only one answer) he lays bare the central
flaw of his existence.

The onlooker will probably be his wife, and the tone employed will
probably imply that she is somehow mysteriously to blame for the fact
that his earthly days are not one unbroken series of joyous
diversions. He has no pose to keep up with his wife. And, moreover, if
he really loves her he will find a certain curious satisfaction in
hurting her now and then, in being wilfully unjust to her, as he would
never hurt or be unjust to a mere friend. (Herein is one of the
mysterious differences between love and affection!) She is alarmed and
secretly aghast, as well she may be. He also is secretly aghast. For
he has confessed a fact which is an inconvenient fact; and
Anglo-Saxons have such a horror of inconvenient facts that they prefer
to ignore them even to themselves. To pretend that things are not what
they are is regarded by Anglo-Saxons as a proof of strength of mind
and wholesomeness of disposition; while to admit that things are
indeed what they are is deemed to be either weakness or cynicism. The
plain man is incapable of being a cynic; he feels, therefore, that he
has been guilty of weakness, and this, of course, makes him very
cross.

"Can't something be done?" says his wife, meaning, "Can't something be
done to ameliorate your hard lot?"

(Misguided creature! It was the wrong phrase to use. And any phrase
would have been the wrong phrase. She ought to have caressed him, for
to a caress there is no answer.)