She shrugged her shoulders. “Fascinating enough, I suppose. But—would you trust him?”
“I would not,” replied I. “Nor any other man. I have long since learned not to trust even myself. But I’d trust him as far as the next man—as far as it’s necessary to trust anyone.”
She nodded in appreciation and agreement. “I believe he genuinely cares for me,” she said, adding with a melancholy look at me, “And it’s pleasant to be cared about.”
“So I have heard,” said I.
“You never wanted anyone to care about you,” said she. “You are independent of everything and everybody.”
“That’s safest,” said I.
She did not reply. After reflecting she burst out with, “You ought to have made me, Godfrey—ought to have trained me to your taste. Women have to be made.”
“Even if that had been possible in this case,” I observed, “I didn’t know enough.”
Again she thought a long time; then with a sigh she said: “But it’s too late now. You’re right. It’s too late.”
It puzzled me to note how much the world had taught her in some ways, and how little in others. But that is a familiar puzzle—the unexpected, startling ways in which knowledge juts out into ignorance and ignorance closes in upon knowledge, forming a coast line between the land of knowledge and the sea of ignorance more jagged than that of Alaska or Norway. The result is that each of us is a confused contention of wisdom and folly in which the imperious instincts of elemental passions and appetites, by their steady persistence, easily get their way.