d
a liar and a coward. And you loved him. With you those two states are
incompatible. They struggle. And that's bad for you. If it goes on you'll
break down. If it stops you'll be all right.... The way to stop it is to
know the _truth_ about Conway. The truth won't clash with your feeling."

"Don't I know it?"

"Not all. Not the part that matters most. You know he was all wrong
morally. You don't know _why_.... Conway was an out and out degenerate.
He couldn't help _that_. He suffered from some physical disability. It
went through everything. It made him so that he couldn't live a man's
life. He was afraid to enter a profession. He was afraid of women."

"He wasn't afraid of me. Not in the beginning."

"Because he felt your strength. You're very strong, Charlotte. You gave
him your strength. And he could _feel_ passion, mind you, though he
couldn't act it.... I suppose he could feel courage, too, only somehow he
couldn't make it work. Have you got it clear?"

She nodded. So clear that it seemed to her he was talking about a thing
she had known once and had forgotten. All the time she had known John's
secret. She knew what would come next: McClane's voice saying, "Well
then, think--think," and his excited gestures, bobbing forward suddenly
from the hips. He went on.

"The balance had to be righted somehow. His whole life must have been a
struggle to right it. Unconscious, of course. Instinctive. His platonics
were just a glorifying of his disability. All that romancing was a
gorgeous transformation of his funk.... So that his very lying was a sort
of truth. I mean it was part of the whole desperate effort after
completion. He jumped at everything that helped him to get compensation,
to get power. He jumped at your feeling for him because it gave him
power. He jumped at the war because the thrill he got out of it gave him
the sense of power. He sucked manhood out of you. He sucked it out of
everything--out of blood and wounds.... He'd have been faithful to you
forever, Charlotte, if you hadn't found him out. _That_ upset all his
delicate adjustments. The war upset him. I think the sight of blood and
wounds whipped up the naked savage in him."

"But--no. He was afraid of that."

"He was afraid of himself. Of what was in him. That fear of his was his
protection, like his fear of women. The war broke it down. Then he was
cruel to you."

"Yes. He was cruel." Her voice sounded flat and hard, without feeling.
She had