“Perhaps I do.”
“You couldn’t. No one understands—really—by intuition. You’ve got to know, through experience—either inside or outside yourself. And I guess you—”
“Do go on! I’m not easily offended.”
“Well, I guess you’ve felt, instead of experiencing. It’s altogether different.”
“I wonder what experience you would countenance?” she asked. “Do you consider that the mother of three children, a woman who has lost both her parents, who has lived nearly forty years, is still without experience?”
He made an extraordinary answer.
“Your soul’s all right,” he said. “It’s your heart that’s undeveloped.”
“Heavens!” she thought. “Is the queer little creature trying to make love to me?”
But he went on.
“The great thing in the world is compassion.”