“I blow up,” she admitted.... “If I had struck you last night it would have hurt, and I should have meant it to hurt; but the moment after I should have been terrifically sorry. Why should I have flared up so, I wonder?”
It was the traditional female attitude, probably, he suggested, carefully keeping from the suggestion made to her at the time that her vehement protest of independence was the sure sign of the beginning of dependence; the female bristles most and kills less, because, he supposed, they grow angry for protection and not as hunters. Traditional female attitude and also the common human sensitiveness to words. He need not tell her what he thought of that. She was insulted again! Always permitting herself to be insulted. Even the gods should not be able to insult via words. But humans like to be insulted. She protested. He insisted; it feeds their pride, he said, and arouses their combativeness, both great human delights. Every human and every nation is eager to be insulted; it’s the hard job in life not to insult them.
Well, perhaps. But he had been so irritatingly calm; so serene; so confident of his ability to charm.
But why not be confident if one does charm?
Who is proud now?
Not he! No more proud of his ability to charm than he is of his ability to eat an omelette. Why should one be proud of so universal a quality? Look about you, he adjured her, at the successful matings—he did not mean marriages. The dog’s-meat man is fondling the hand of the cook with the scraggly hair! “Beefy face and grubby hand!” Men kill one another for the veriest drabs of women, and women grow desperate with jealousy over the blankest of males. Everyone has charm; the Lord knows why he distributed it so generally.
“Mawnin’, M’s Geraldine!” a happy, shining darkey plumped at them from among the grapes.
“Good-morning, Bolivar,” she waved a hand.
“Mawnin’, M’s Geraldine!” called a voice a little below on the other side of the road. Through the corn another black head peeped out.
“Good-morning, Saul.”