“If I decide to alter them, will you take the poem?” asked Carl, bluntly.
“Oh, no, no, Mr. Felman; your work is by no means good enough for publication,” she answered. “I merely meant that this poem in particular had an element of interest.”
Accustomed to blows of all kinds, Carl felt relieved that her frigid shroud had been finally lifted, and with a smile he reached for his cap. Conversation is merely a tenuous or sturdy protection given to an instinctive like or dislike, and with their first words people unconsciously reveal the attitude toward each other which they will afterward try to excuse and defend with great deliberation. Carl hated the woman in front of him, not because she had slighted his work, but because she held to him an attenuated and brightly burnished hypocrisy that was like a shriveled mask incessantly polished by her words. He could have imagined her stamping upon a hyacinth as though she were conferring a careful favor upon the petals and calyx. Mary Aldridge, on her part, disliked the straight lines of intent which she could sense beneath his terse questions and missed the bland insincerities of those smoothly adjusted postures known as good manners. Life to her was a series of stiffly draped and modulated curves, violated only by rare moments of guarded exasperation and anger.
“Would you advise me to stop writing?” asked Carl.
“No, indeed,” she answered, with her first small smile. “Your work is rather promising and you seem to be quite young. Some of it reminds me of Arthur Symons. Of course, I don’t think that you will ever become a great poet, but we need lesser voices as well as greater ones, you know.”
“Would you mind if I asked you to stop using that word ra-ather and try a little spontaneous directness?” asked Carl, blithely.
She rose suddenly and addressed the other woman, ignoring his words as though they had been a trivial insult.
“I’ve just remembered that I must meet Mr. Seeman at three,” she said. “I’m afraid that I shall have to leave you with this impulsive gentleman.”
Carl stood up, but the other woman revealed with an unrestrained smile that she was actually aware of his presence.
“Won’t you stay awhile?” she asked. “We can talk a bit over your work, if you care.”