"Let me congratulate and condole, may I, both at once?"
"You've taught, too!"
"Does that give me so completely away? Yes, I've taught, but it was many years ago, in an interim between college and medical when I was trying to earn money to put myself through."
"But you haven't forgotten."
"Not a thing. It makes me uncomfortable yet to think of some of the mistakes I made, the big opportunities I let get by. I suppose I did not have the right stuff in me for a teacher. I started so full of hope and plans, although I knew it was not to be my life work, but I let my enthusiasm die down. I let all kinds of small, personal things dull the edge."
"But it's so difficult to keep the edge sharp. Sometimes I think that living close to the earth and animals makes one like them."
"I don't know but that you're right. Only that never occurred to me then. Perhaps I went at things too violently, but when I couldn't wake them up, well—I just let them sleep."
"And they've been asleep ever since, at least mine have. I'm afraid I can never wake them up."
Pat's voice was grave with her deep interest and Jean glimpsed the scope of teaching as she had never before.
"Oh, yes, you can. Because you realize that there is something underneath; I didn't. I called it emptiness, when it was really desperate shyness and fear of new things, a kind of deep, perverted faithfulness to all they have ever known."