Read it through once

I affected to be greatly amused; it is all one can do in such circumstances; it is all one can do, and yet there is no value in it; it deceives nobody, and you can see that everybody around pities you and is ashamed of you. One of the hardest situations in life, I think, is to be full of grief and a sense of defeat and shabbiness that way, and yet have to put on an outside of archness and gaiety, while all the time you know that your own expedition, the treasures of your heart, and whose love and reverence you are by the custom of our civilisation entitled to, are being consumed with humiliation before strangers to see you earning and getting a compassion, which is a stigma, a brand—a brand which certifies you to be—oh, anything and everything which is fatal to human respect.