“I should like to know every bit of your history,” he said, “every detail.”
“How you would hate me!”
“I think not. Some people might have hated you the other night when you looked like all the furies, but I was the more interested. The usual does not appeal to me particularly.”
“But there is a limit! If ever I want you to hate me, I will tell you the story of my life, as they say in New York.”
“Why in New York?”
“It is a bit of slang, and New York is the factory of much of the American slang and a sort of clearing-house for the rest. Does not our slang appeal to you?”
“I find it utterly meaningless,” he said candidly. “Ours is bad enough, but at least it has some point.”
“That ours has none is the whole point. It takes the sharp American wits to understand a new bit of slang or a new joke; the cryptic quality of both, indeed, has played its part in sharpening those same wits. If you are not ever on the alert over there, you go under.”
“Really? What a bore!”
She laughed as naturally as a child, but even in her mirth she no longer betrayed the nurture of the West.