“Fine!” he told her. “But I had a free afternoon—she had some friends there, and I thought I’d like to see you.”
“There’s nothing at all wrong?”
“Not a thing! Only—I don’t know—I’ve been wanting to have a talk with you for a good while.... I know I talk too much, but just the same, it seems to me the best way to get anywhere.”
“Sit down,” she said, smiling. “I think you’re very fortunate to be able to talk, Alfred. I can’t think of anything nicer than to be able to express what you feel.”
He did sit down opposite her, and at once assumed his serious, conversational look.
“It’s a lot more than that,” he said. “I have an idea that you can’t really feel a thing until you do express it. That’s the value of talking; not that it conveys your ideas to someone else, because generally it doesn’t, but that it wakes up your own brain.... But this was going to be about Andrée.... There’s something I want to get from you—something I can’t get hold of.”
“If you mean how best to get on with her—” she began, but he interrupted.
“No; it’s not that. That’s all a mistake—this ‘getting on’ with people. It means either humouring her, like a spoiled child, or trying to dominate her. Well, what I want is, to let her alone. And that’s what I can’t do. I’m always trying to make her see things my way.”
“But you can’t help doing that when you know you’re right.”
“I don’t know; I only think. I’m only an experimenter. I may be wrong about lots of things. Anyway, she’s experimenting, too, and she’s altogether too fine to be bothered. I’ve spent the best part of my life shouting people down, and now it’s hard to stop. It isn’t that I’ve tried to cram my ideas down anyone’s throat,” he assured her, earnestly. “All I ever wanted to do was to start people thinking. I’ve always tried to keep hold of that idea that I was an experimenter, but I’m too darned sure. I’m—well, I’m not humble enough, d’you see? I interfere.... Now, that’s what I’ve always admired so in you. That’s what makes you so wonderful. You don’t interfere.”