“I’d reply: ‘Any thing, so long as you don’t worry me.’”
Again they laughed, and this time Muriel did so with more sincerity, for she felt that she had answered him well.
He took a rose from the bunch in her hands, and smelt it thoughtfully. “Yes, I’m going to try,” he said at length. “I’m going to understand you, and then make you understand yourself. I’m going to show you yourself.”
“You’re a busy man,” she answered, at once estranged; “you’d better not take on any new job.”
“It’s worth while, I think,” he replied.
There was something in his voice which changed the tone of their conversation, and arrested the development of her hostile feelings. The flippancy of their words died away, and a new seriousness, a salient eventfulness, took its place. Suddenly Muriel was filled with longing to be understood, to be laid bare mentally both to him and to herself. She felt solitary and her heart cried out for the enlightenment of friendship; yet she did not dare to make an intimate of this man, whose treatment of her sex did not seem to be conspicuously delicate. Nevertheless the inadequacy, the inutility of her method of life was very forcibly presented to her, and she seemed to be beating at the bars of her cage. There was something so flat and unprofitable in all that she had done, and the desire was urgent in her to realize herself and expand.
“O, I want to be taught,” she exclaimed, “I want to be taught....” She checked herself, and was silent.
He looked at her in surprise, for she uttered the words with intensity, and it was clear that she meant them; but it was not clear that they were prompted by more than a passing emotion, for presently she began to talk about the lighter things of her life, and she spoke of the various events in prospect which would keep her from brooding. The greater part of each day for the next week or so was already filled; and Muriel spoke of these coming events as though they were dispensations granted to her by a benevolent Fortune for her heart’s comfort.
“I’ve come to the conclusion,” she said, “that the only way to be happy is to be surrounded by amusing people, so that there is no opportunity for thinking about oneself.”
He shook his head. “No, you’re wrong. Your happiness must come from within, from the contentment and fullness of your own mind. The Buddha once said ‘Let us dwell free from yearning, among men who are anxious’; and there is an anonymous Oriental poem which says something about the lost paradise being hidden, really, in the human breast. My good girl,” he exclaimed, warming to his subject, “don’t you realize that what you can get from this restless world of ‘society’ you live in is only pleasure, not happiness, and even at that it doesn’t last. You are like a punctured wheel: so long as people are pumping you up, you seem to be all right, but when they leave you alone you go flat, because your inner tube isn’t sound. You ought to be alone in the desert for a bit: it would do you all the good in the world.”