“I’ve never told you a hundredth part. There’s never any time. But I’ll tell you one nice thing. There’s a way in which ever since I’ve known you, you obliterate other men. Yes. For me. It’s most tiresome.”
“Oh, my dear! Is that true, Miriam?”
“Oh yes. From the first time I saw you. There you were. I can’t bear your ideas. But I always find myself testing other men, better men, by the way, by you.”
“I haven’t any ideas, Miriam, and I’m a reformed character. There’s heaps of time. You’re here another ten days yet. You shall camp in here. We’ll talk, devastatingly.”
“If I once began——”
“Begin. We’re going to explore each other’s minds.”
“I should bore you to death.”
“You never bore me. Really. It does me good to quarrel with Miriam. But we’re not going to quarrel. We’re going to explore each other and stop nowhere. Agreed?”
“I’ve seen you ill with boredom. You hate silence and you hate opposition. You always think people’s minds are blank when they are silent. It’s just the other way round. Only of course there are so many kinds of silence. But the test of absolutely everything in life is the quality of the in-between silences. It’s only in silence that you can judge of your relationship to a person.”
“You shall be silent. You shall deploy a whole regiment of silences ... but you’ll fire off an occasional volley of speech?”