And when she wasn't asking questions, her quiet studying of him for long minutes was even more upsetting.
Next morning, on the way to the electric train, Ernie made a purchase at the drugstore. When he sat down beside Vivian, she took one look at him and gave a very deliberate-sounding hollow laugh.
"Black glasses!" she said. "I tell him he's attractive because he has Flashing Eyes and within two days he's wearing black glasses. I suppose I should have guessed it."
"But my eyes hurt," Ernie protested. "Sensitive to sunlight, I think." He wished he could explain to her that he'd bought the glasses not only in case he got caught out at night, but also to convince his sister he hadn't been lying about sore eyes. He hadn't intended to wear them by day and hardly knew why he'd put them on before joining Vivian.
"Spare me your rationalizations," she said. "Your motives are clear to me, Ernie, and they happen to be very commonplace."
She leaned toward him and her voice, little more than a whisper, took on an unexpectedly gloomy, chilling, hopeless tone.
"See these people all around us, Ernie? They're suicides, every one of them. Day by day, in every way, they're killing themselves. People love them, admire them, and it only makes them uneasy. They have abilities and charms by the bushel—yes, they do, even that man with the wen on his neck—and they only try to hide them. The spotlight turns their way and they goof. They think they're running away from failure, but actually they're running away from success."
Ernie looked at them, he couldn't help it, her voice made him, and the ability of Page-at-a-Glance Reading chose that moment to come back to him, only applied to faces instead of letters, and there seemed to be another ability along with it, unclear as yet but frightening. He felt like a very old detective scanning the lineup for the thousandth time.
The black glasses didn't interfere a bit—the dozens of faces in this speeding electric car were suddenly as familiar as the court cards in a deck—and he had the feeling that, like a bunch of pink pasteboards, they were about to be hurled in his face.