“My name’s even more meaningless, if that’s possible,” she answered. “I haven’t done a thing to make it of any importance. Not a thing.”
“Well, you’re not gray-haired, yet—unless you dye it,” he said, with a boyish geniality. “You have still time enough to conquer the world.”
He had a soft and low, but unmistakably masculine voice, that pleased her.
“Yes, a girl can keep on telling that to herself until there’s no time left,” she responded.
“How doleful you sound,” he replied. “Have a heart—you’ll make me confess my own pessimism in a minute, if you keep it up.”
She laughed softly.
“No, you’re still young—you have plenty of time to conquer the wo-o-orld,” she said, mimickingly.
“I was only trying to be pleasantly conventional,” he responded. “Lord knows, I’m a child of night myself—morbid moods, and hatreds, and despairs. I do try to tone it down, though. The world may be a muddled and treacherous place, on the whole, but if you never laugh about it, then you let it interfere too much with your work. I don’t know why I’m telling you all this—you’re probably not interested.”
She liked his tone of quiet self-disparagement and understanding resignation—the absence of the usual masculine: “Look me over, kid, I’m there!”
“Of course I’m interested,” she said. “It’s this way—’f you go around and laugh too much, why, then it’s just like taking dope, and then again, ’f you don’t laugh enough, you see, you get too wise to your own smallness. There’s never any cure for anything, I guess.”