“I am a hound—I cavort around with my nose in the air, eager to search out things.”
“But how did you sense me from the beginning?” she came back.
“I knew you were the kind of woman you have turned out to be. I did not judge you to be simply an astonishingly healthy animal—your health is uproarious; it shouts at one!—vivacious, gabbly, frothy——”
“Thank you; oh, thank you!”
“I thought you had a mind,” he went on. “I sensed it. Your broad forehead showed it; the eyes wide apart and large; the way you held your head on your neck; the judgment and taste in your clothes; the inflection of your voice; your choice even of slang; your laugh; your frown; the care you spent on your body (no woman is better than her hair!); your forced volubility; your woman’s smile which belied the girlish chatter—and so on and so on. That’s what I call sensing you. Most persons go on words, but speech is of very little use in judging persons. That’s why the legal witness-box is so absurd.”
“I’m trying to think of that quotation—‘Twelfth Night,’ isn’t it?—where Olivia gives an inventory of herself; item, one nose; item, two eyes; item, one mouth.... You gave me no impression you were taking an inventory of my charms. But you are right about words. I often mean the opposite of what I say.”
“Yes! Speech is not natural. It’s an acquired skill and a poor exponent of the self within. We are always being fooled by it; and yet words are causing all the trouble and misunderstanding in the world. We should be able to look beyond words. That’s how I came to give up being insulted.”
“How did you manage? I’m very sensitive to a snub.”
“I got to looking beyond the words to the real person speaking. Do you remember Tittbottom’s spectacles?”
“No.”