At first no one ventured to speak quite sincerely; but one thing
led to another until we were gradually caught in our own snares, and
finally we each gave out something that we had hitherto kept concealed
within us, as one locks up a deadly poison.
Not one of us, it appeared, ever cried because of some imperative inward
need. Tears are nature's gift to us. It is our own affair whether we
squander or economise their use.
Of all our confessions Sophie Harden's was the strangest. To her, tears
were a kind of erotic by-play, which added to the enjoyment of conjugal
life. Her husband, a good-natured creature, always believed he was to
blame, and she never enlightened him on the point.
Most of the others owned that they had recourse to tears to work
themselves up when they wanted to make a scene. But Astrid Bagge, a
gentle, quiet housewife and mother, declared she kept all her troubles
for the evenings when her husband dined at the volunteer's mess, because
he hated to see anyone crying.
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