"Probably you're right." She laughed happily. "I'd never thought of that before.... No, I hate it, and all those people. Imagine what Fitzie told me today. She said you always turned up as a sign that tea was over and it was time to wait not on the order of her going but go at once... Isn't she a fool? Then she added that it was rumored round Jordan that my engagement to Fanshaw would be announced any day... O, Wenny, people are a scream!"
"I probably do look rather grouchy when I come here and find a lot of those young hens cackling about your technique and that wretched old cadenza hound ..."
"It's pretty ridiculous, Wenny, that two people who know each other as well as we do can't talk...." Nan interrupted suddenly, speaking slowly, choosing her words: "Can't talk about our ... can't explain ourselves. O, I wonder if we'll ever know each other."
"Perhaps the fact that we need to explain ourselves ..."
"You mean it proves that we can't?"
Wenny nodded.
"Or perhaps it's just cowardice," he went on after a long pause, feeling everything within the cold bars of his ribs throb sickeningly. "Almost everything is that."
"Why can't we be sensible?"
"It's not sensible, it's alive I'd want to be ... But this is repeating," he said harshly with trembling lips, straightening himself up. It was as if a rind had burst in him letting out warm, sweetish floods; as if he were crying beside a grave where she had lain dead for years and lifetimes, his memory full of an ivory body he had loved.
They were silent, not looking at each other.