anything that's not base. They know life is mostly bad and cruel and
dull and low, and above all that it's bound to fool you if you trust to
it, or get off your guard a single minute. They don't _teach_ you that,
you know; but you see it's what they believe and what they spend all
their energies trying to dodge a little, all they think they can. Then
everything you read, except the silly little Bibliothèque-Rose sort of
thing, makes you know that it's true . . . Anatole France, and Maupassant,
and Schnitzler. Of course back in America you find lots of nice people
who don't believe that. But they're so sweet you know they'd swallow
anything that made things look pleasant. So you don't dare take their
word for anything. They won't even look at what's bad in everybody's
life, they just pretend it's not there, not in _their_ husbands, or
wives or children, and so you know they're fooled." She lowered her
voice, which faltered a little, but she still continued to look straight
into his eyes, "And as for love, why, I've just hated the sound of the
name and . . . I'm horribly afraid of it, even now."

He asked her gravely, "Don't you love me? Don't you think that I love
you?"

She looked at him piteously, wincing, bracing herself with an effort to
be brave. "I must try to be as honest as I want you to be. Yes, I love
you, Neale, with all my heart a thousand times more than I ever dreamed
I could love anybody. But how do I know that I'm not somehow fooling
myself: but that maybe all that huge unconscious inheritance from all my
miserable ancestors hasn't _got_ me, somehow, and you too? How do I know
that I'm not being fooled by Nature and fooling you with fine words?"

She hesitated, probing deep into her heart, and brought out now, like a
great and unexpected treasure, "But, Neale, listen! I _don't_ think that