“Your career?” He seemed at a loss.
“Yes. My career. It has possibly not occurred to you that I also may have a career.”
Musa became appealing.
“You understand me,” he said. “I told you you do not comprehend, but you comprehend everything. It is that which enrages me. You have had experience. You know what men are. You could teach me so much. I hate young girls. I have always hated them. They are so tasteless, so insufferably innocent. I could not talk to a young girl as I talk to you. It would be absurd. Now as to my career—what I said——”
“Musa,” she interrupted him, with a sinister quietude, “I want to tell you something. But you must promise to keep it secret. Will you?”
He assented, impatient.
“It is not possible!” he exclaimed, when she had told him that she belonged to precisely the category of human beings whom he hated and despised.
“Isn’t it?” said she. “Now I hope you see how little you know, really, about women.” She laughed.
“It is not possible!” he repeated. And then he said with deliberate ingenuousness: “I am so content. I am so happy. I could not have hoped for it. It is overwhelming. I am everything you like of the most idiotic, blind, stupid. But now I am happy. Could I ever have borne that you had loved before I knew you? I doubt if I could have borne it. Your innocence is exquisite. It is intoxicating to me.”
“Musa,” she remarked dryly; “I wish you would remember that you are in England. People do not talk in that way in England. It simply is not done. And I will not listen to it.” Her voice grew a little tender. “Why can we not just be friends?”