“Have you tried being cool and distant? Being, so to speak, a stranger to him?”
“Yes, I have.”
“And he?”
“He never even noticed that I was being a stranger to him. He was as happy and good-tempered as ever.”
Olga shook her head dejectedly. “Have you tried being hysterical?” she asked after a while.
I hesitated. “I think so,” I said at last. “But I do not quite know what you mean.”
“Well,” explained Olga sententiously, “with some men, who cannot bear healthy normal women, hysteria is a great success. Of course, it must be esthetic hysteria—you must try to preserve the plastic line through it all,” and Olga sketched with her thumb a vague painter's gesture in the air. “For example, you deluge yourself in strange perfumes. You trail about the house in weird clinging gowns. You faint away at the sight of certain shades of color—”
“What an absurd idea!” I exclaimed.
“Not at all. Not in the least,” said Olga. “On the contrary, it is very modern, very piquant to swoon away every time you see a certain shade of—of mauve, for instance.”
“But what if I don't see it?”