“And what other people, now?”
“Oh, better ones than myself: the great writers mainly—the great philosophers and poets of the past; those who are dead and gone and can’t speak for themselves.”
“And what do you say about them?”
“I say they sometimes attached themselves to very clever women!” I answered, laughing. I spoke with great deliberation, but as my words fell upon the air they struck me as imprudent. However, I risked them and I was not sorry, for perhaps after all the old woman would be willing to treat. It seemed to be tolerably obvious that she knew my secret: why therefore drag the matter out? But she did not take what I had said as a confession; she only asked:
“Do you think it’s right to rake up the past?”
“I don’t know that I know what you mean by raking it up; but how can we get at it unless we dig a little? The present has such a rough way of treading it down.”
“Oh, I like the past, but I don’t like critics,” the old woman declared with her fine tranquility.
“Neither do I, but I like their discoveries.”
“Aren’t they mostly lies?”
“The lies are what they sometimes discover,” I said, smiling at the quiet impertinence of this. “They often lay bare the truth.”