“I have seen Mr. Towers,” I remarked, mentally determining that you should suffer for that distinction.
“Indeed! what manner of man is he?”
“His dust has congealed, stiffened into a sort of plaster-of-Paris exterior, and he has what I call a disinterred intelligence!”
“A what?”
“A man whose very personality is a kind of mental reservation, and whose intelligence has been resurrected up through the thought and philosophy of three thousand years.”
M—— looked awkward but impressed.
And I hoped he would ask how you actually looked, for I was in the mood to give a perfectly God-fearing description of you.
But from the foregoing you will see that I am capable of sharing your literary glory on the sly, and without compunction. Indeed, the false rôle created in me a perverse mood. And I entered into a literary discussion with M—— that outraged his pedantic soul. It was my way of perjuring his judgment, in return for his unwitting approval of my reviews. Besides, the assumption of infallibility by dull, scholarly men who have neither imagination nor genius has always amused me. And this one danced now as frantically as if he had unintentionally grasped a live wire that hurt and burned, but would not let go! Finally I said very engagingly:
“Doctor M——, I hope to improve in these matters by taking a course of instruction under you next year.”
“Now God forbid that you should ever do such a thing, Miss Doane! I would sooner have you thrust dynamite under the chair of English Literature, than see you in one of my classes!”