“I mean you somehow hinder your self-expression.”
“I do not let myself go? Is that what you mean?”
“Precisely. What are you afraid of?”
“Then you believe in letting oneself go?” she asked.
“Well, why not?”
“Suppose one isn’t sure of one’s stopping places?”
We became involved in a discussion of the moralities, hitherto, present and future, tending to become audacious. This is a pastime by means of which, in first acquaintance, two persons of opposite sex may indulge their curiosity with perfect security. The subject is abstract. The tone is impersonal. Neither one knows how far the other will go. They dare each other to follow, one step at a time, and are both surprised at the ground they can make. There is at the same time an inaudible exchange, which is even more thrilling, for that is personal. This need never be acknowledged. If the abstract does not lead naturally to the concrete, then the whole conversation remains impersonal and the inaudible part may be treated as if it had never occurred. That is the basic rule of the game.
Her courage amazed me. I began to see what she meant by supposing that one might not be sure of one’s stopping places. She had been reading France, Stendhal, Zola, Shaw, Pater, Ibsen, Strindberg and Nietzsche.
Mrs. Galt reappeared. “We are debating the sins of Babylon,” I said. She smiled and asked me to dinner.
That was the beginning. We went the next Sunday to the Metropolitan Museum and one evening that same week to the theatre. What we set out to see was an English play that everyone was talking about. At the last minute she asked if the tickets might be changed. And when I asked her where she would go instead she naïvely mentioned a musical comedy much more talked about than the English play for very different reasons. Afterwards when I asked her what part of the show she liked best she said: “The way people laughed.”