She went downstairs calmly, with her old demure bearing, at dinnertime. He was still yellow at the gills: in for one of his liver bouts, when he was really very queer. He was reading a French book.
"Have you ever read Proust?" he asked her.
"I've tried, but he bores me."
"He's really very extraordinary."
"Possibly! But he bores me: all that sophistication! He doesn't have feelings, he only has streams of words about feelings. I'm tired of self-important mentalities."
"Would you prefer self-important animalities?"
"Perhaps! But one might possibly get something that wasn't self-important."
"Well, I like Proust's subtlety and his well-bred anarchy."
"It makes you very dead, really."
"There speaks my evangelical little wife."