“I see. We’ll talk of something else then. Have you ever been in love?”
“Have you?”
“Violently—so I believed.”
“But you got over it?”
“Absolutely! And you?”
“Oh, I haven’t had the time. I’ve been too busy earning bread and butter. What was she like?”
“A beautiful mirage—the lie in the desert, you might say. Has it ever occurred to you that the mirage is the one lie Nature utters?”
“I hadn’t thought. She deceived you?”
“Yes.”
A short duration of silence.