‘But doesn’t it make you feel ashamed? I think it makes one so ashamed, to be ill — illness is so terribly humiliating, don’t you think?’

He considered for some minutes.

‘May-be,’ he said. ‘Though one knows all the time one’s life isn’t really right, at the source. That’s the humiliation. I don’t see that the illness counts so much, after that. One is ill because one doesn’t live properly — can’t. It’s the failure to live that makes one ill, and humiliates one.’

‘But do you fail to live?’ she asked, almost jeering.

‘Why yes — I don’t make much of a success of my days. One seems always to be bumping one’s