“That idea of companionship had not entered my head. But now that you have spoken of it—or your letters, lately, have seemed to suggest it—I am venturing to reply that, just being with you is a pleasure to me ... just to walk with you and remain mentally idle, I mean. I realised it only when you spoke of it.
“Friendship seems to be very complex. You must remember that this is my first intelligent friendship. It quite overshadows all other associations. So I really do not know just where my feeling for you could fail to include all the best that is in me.
“I’d like to talk to you about it. If only you were here! Do you know that if it were not for your letters I’d be unhappy here, in spite of my beloved profession?
“Is this what you would like to have me say to you?
“You drew a picture of yourself as a brain on two legs; and of me in academic cap and gown, with a silly expression on my face, clasping both hands in ecstasy before you. Out of your brain comes a balloon with something written in Latin—‘Animus est in patinis.’
“I asked Mr. Donnell. He said it meant, ‘My mind is among the sauce-pans.’ In other words, you mean that your mind sometimes harbours material thoughts, while mine is the stupid, empty mind of a horrid, unhuman, intellectual sponge!
“That is very impudent of you. Good heavens, if I am like that, it will ruin me for my profession!
“Experience is what I lack. I sit and actually beat my head with both hands when, at moments, I catch a glimmer of all that I ought to be and ought to have experienced, and ought to know.
“Education is everything! One’s career depends on it. Yet, is experience necessary to education? It can not always be. The prospect would seem terrifying. And of course any such theory becomes ridiculous in the last analysis.
“We were discussing that question the other evening—Mr. Donnell, Betsy, Mr. Smull—he arrived unexpectedly last Monday—and I was listening, not taking part in the discussion—when Mr. Smull said that nobody was fit to play a person in love unless he or she had actually been in love.