“Except the villains,” Eleanor interposed. “People like Iago aren’t trying.”
“Well, we’ll make an exception of the villains; we’re talking of people like us, pretty good people 110 with the right instincts. Well then, if all the time we’re trying to be good and true and fine, we carry about a blank face that reflects nothing of what we are feeling and thinking, the world is a little worse off, a little duller and heavier place for what is going on inside of us.”
“Well, how can we make it better off then?” Eleanor inquired practically.
“By not thinking too much about it for one thing, except to remember to smile, by trying to be just as much at home in it as possible, by letting the kind of person we are trying to be show through on the outside. By gosh! I wish Beulah could hear me.”
“By just not being bashful, do you mean?”
“That’s the idea.”
“Well, when Aunt Beulah makes me do those dancing exercises, standing up in the middle of the floor and telling me to be a flower and express myself as a flower, does she just mean not to be bashful?”
“Something like that: she means stop thinking of yourself and go ahead—”
“But how can I go ahead with her sitting there watching?” 111
“I suppose I ought to tell you to imagine that you had the soul of a flower, but I haven’t the nerve.”