"Please, go on!"
"Is straw wanted in Egypt? Do you want my stories, when you can invent your own?"
"Do, please, go on!"
"Apparently, you write fiction for other people and want truth for yourself?"
It does not occur to him that one might wish to write the truth.
"Well," he said, "so be it!"
———
"Well," repeated my neighbor, "there's nothing to be ashamed of. We had a room to ourselves, I was a young man then, more given to that sort of thing—and I asked her what was the matter. She burst out crying!
"I felt very sorry for her. Besides being my wife, she was an orphan, away from her home, and altogether much to be pitied."