“And thou, Brutus!—after I had lifted the veil! I am very magnanimous. I play a talk game with you, and let you ask me impossible questions, label myself for you, uncover my dearest theories, deal mercifully with your syllogizing, and now I agree to your formula,—yes, and I take off my brown paper. What more could mortal woman do?”
“Nothing more,” I said, staring at the lettering on the book, “nothing more, except tell me why on earth you are reading ‘Emma’?”
She gave a little chuckle and shook her head. “That,” she said, “is the one thing you have asked that I can not answer.”
III
WITH A GYM GIRL
There had been some mistake about the time, and she was there an hour ahead of the class, a circumstance which I had not the conscience to resent, for she said I might stay until the class came. Meanwhile we sat in the big, cool gymnasium, into which fell patches of spring sunlight that painted here the shining floor, and there striped the dangling lines of rope, falling finally into whimsical arabesques on the dumb-bell rack. It was a co-educational sort of gymnasium, as one might guess from the punching-bag and other devices, classes of men and women, boys and girls, alternating in possession, under the discipline of an academy.