Now, as she stood thus behind me, her hand fell and, for a moment, rested lightly upon my shoulder.
"Peter."
"Yes, Charmian."
"I wish, yes, I do wish that you were either much younger or very much older."
"Why?"
"Because you wouldn't be quite so—so cryptic—such a very abstruse problem. Sometimes I think I understand you better than you do yourself, and sometimes I am utterly lost; now, if you were younger I could read you easily for myself, and, if you were older, you would read yourself for me."
"I was never very young!" said I.
"No, you were always too repressed, Peter."
"Yes, perhaps I was."
"Repression is good up to a certain point, but beyond that it is dangerous," said she, with a portentous shake of the head. "Heigho! was it a week or a year ago that you avowed yourself happy, and couldn't tell why?"