“Do women like him?”
“It shows how really remarkable he is, that he has never been spoiled by them.”
“Are you trying to make me jealous?”
“Of course I am not! I hope I have pulled all my pettiness up by the roots—long ago!”
“You are one of the purest types of female I have ever met. If you weren’t, you wouldn’t radiate charm from every electrical hair on your head.” He had been trying to stride about the little room. He stopped short and leaned both hands on the table. “Julia,” he said, “do you want to know exactly what I think of you?”
“What could be more interesting?”
“I think you are a magnificent bluffer. No, don’t flash those arc-lights on me. I mean you bluff yourself, not the world. You are sincere, all right. But you’ve hypnotized yourself. Ask your old Mohammedan if I’m not right. He gave you a suggestion or two, from all accounts.”
“If you were not talking nonsense, I should be angry. I’m quite well aware that I was deliberately prepared for all this, and long before I went to India. Wait until you meet Bridgit; she’ll tell you her part in it. And even if I were hypnotized? Are not we all more or less? Hypnotized by the currents of life, by its waves beating on our brains? Some are drawn to one current, some to another. It all depends upon our particular gift for usefulness. This happens to be my métier. Sooner or later, whether I had gone to India or not, even if I had not known Bridgit, even if—a friend had not written the book that started us all in this direction, I should have drifted into my current. Only I had the good fortune to be steered soon instead of late.”
“Not bad reasoning.” Tay stared at her for a moment, then took up his restricted march. “All the same there are layers and layers that you have deliberately covered up. Pretended they are not there. That is what I mean by bluffing.”
“Oh, you don’t understand us. Wait until you have met twenty or thirty more.”