So it hadnt been wrong or dishonest of her to say no this morning, when he asked if she hated him, any more than it had been wrong or dishonest to serve him the elaborate breakfast and to show the elaborate interest in his work, and to kiss him goodbye. The kiss, for that matter, had been exactly righta perfectly fair, friendly kiss, a kiss for a boy youd just met at a party, a boy whod danced with you and made you laugh and walked you home afterwards, talking about himself all the way.The only real mistake, the only wrong and dishonest thing, was ever to have seen him as anything more than that. Oh, for a month or two, just for fun, it might be all right to play a game like that with a boy; but all these years! And all because, in a sentimentally lonely time long ago, she had found it easy and agreeable to believe whatever this one particular boy felt like saying, and to repay him for that pleasure by telling easy, agreeable lies of her own, until each was saying what the other most wanted to hearuntil he was saying I love you and she was saying Really, I mean it; youre the most interesting person Ive ever met. What a subtle, treacherous thing it was to let yourself go that way! Because once youd started it was terribly difficult to stop; soon you were saying Im sorry, of course youre right, and Whatever you think is best, and Youre the most wonderful and valuable thing in the world, and the next thing you knew all honesty, all truth, was as far away and glimmering, as hopelessly unattainable as the world of the golden people. Then you discovered you were working at life the way the Laurel Players worked at The Petrified Forest, or the way Steve Kovick worked at his drumsearnest and sloppy and full of pretension and all wrong; you found you were saying yes when you meant no, and Weve got to be together on this thing when you meant the very opposite; then you were breathing gasoline as if it were flowers and abandoning yourself to a delirium of love under the weight of a clumsy, grunting, red-faced man you didnt even likeShep Campbell!and then you were face to face, in total darkness, with the knowledge that you didnt know who you were. (p.416-7)