Now, here’s what I think she thinks I am thinking:
“Oh, this fiery, fervid Paris, how can my pen proclaim its sovereignty over cities, its call to high endeavour, its immemorial grace? How can I paint its folly and its faith, its laughter and its tears, its streets where tragedy and farce walk arm in arm, where parody hobnobs with pride, and beauty bends to ridicule! Oh, exquisite Paris! so old and yet so eternally young, so peerless, yet ever prinking and preening to make more exorbitant demands on our admiration....” And so on.
Here’s what I am really thinking:
“Funny I should run into Livewire like that. To think of it! We swapped the same dime novels, robbed the same cherry-trees. Together we competed for the bottom place in the class. (I think I generally won.) By pedagogic standards we were certainly impossible. And yet at some studies how precocious! How I remember that novel I wrote, The Corsair’s Crime, or the Hound of the Hellispont, illustrated by Livewire on every page. Oh, I’d give a hundred dollars to have that manuscript to-day!” and so on.
Here’s what I say I am thinking:
“I was wondering, Anastasia, if when you bought that chicken, you let them clean it in the shop. Because if you do they just take it away and bring you back an inferior one. You can’t trust them. You should clean it yourself. Be sure you roast it gently, so as to have it nicely browned all over....” And so on.
It is night now and I am working on my articles while she sews steadily. It has been a long silent evening, a fire of boulets throws out a gentle heat, and she sits on one side, I on the other. About ten o’clock she complains of feeling tired, and decides to go to bed. After our habit I lie down on my own bed, to wait with her till she goes to sleep; for she is just like a child in some ways. I am reading, and the better to see, I lie with my head where my feet should be.
As she is dropping off to sleep, suddenly she says:
“Will you let me hold your foot, darleen?”
“Yes, it’s there. But if you want to look for holes in the sock, you won’t find any.”