“Wait and see,” she taunted. “So you won’t let me send you books?” she questioned after a pause.
“No.”
“No, I thank you,” she prompted.
“No, I thank you,” he amended. “I’m an uncouth sort of person, but I meant the ‘thank you.’”
“Of course you did. And uncouthness is the last thing in the world you could be accused of. That’s the wonder of it.... No; I don’t suppose it really is. It’s birth.”
“If it’s anything, it’s training. My father was a stickler for forms, in spite of being a sort of hobo.”
“Well, forms make the game, very largely. You won’t find them essentially different when you go out into the—I forgot again. That kind of prophecy annoys you, doesn’t it? There is one book I’m going to send you, though, which you can’t refuse. Nobody can refuse it. It isn’t done.”
“What is that?”
Her answer surprised him. “The Bible.”
“Are you religious? Of course, a butterfly should be, shouldn’t she? should believe in the release of the soul from its chrysalis—the butterfly’s immortality. Yet I wouldn’t have suspected you of a leaning in that direction.”