Virginia Woolf: Night and Day

25. CHAPTER XXV (continued)

"Don't you see that if you have no relations with people it's easier to be honest with them?" she inquired. "That is what I meant. One needn't cajole them; one's under no obligation to them. Surely you must have found with your own family that it's impossible to discuss what matters to you most because you're all herded together, because you're in a conspiracy, because the position is false--" Her reasoning suspended itself a little inconclusively, for the subject was complex, and she found herself in ignorance whether Denham had a family or not. Denham was agreed with her as to the destructiveness of the family system, but he did not wish to discuss the problem at that moment.

He turned to a problem which was of greater interest to him.

"I'm convinced," he said, "that there are cases in which perfect sincerity is possible--cases where there's no relationship, though the people live together, if you like, where each is free, where there's no obligation upon either side."

"For a time perhaps," she agreed, a little despondently. "But obligations always grow up. There are feelings to be considered. People aren't simple, and though they may mean to be reasonable, they end"--in the condition in which she found herself, she meant, but added lamely--"in a muddle."

"Because," Denham instantly intervened, "they don't make themselves understood at the beginning. I could undertake, at this instant," he continued, with a reasonable intonation which did much credit to his self-control, "to lay down terms for a friendship which should be perfectly sincere and perfectly straightforward."

She was curious to hear them, but, besides feeling that the topic concealed dangers better known to her than to him, she was reminded by his tone of his curious abstract declaration upon the Embankment. Anything that hinted at love for the moment alarmed her; it was as much an infliction to her as the rubbing of a skinless wound.

But he went on, without waiting for her invitation.