“A bore!”
“Can I help?”
“How could you?”
“I don't know. Perhaps by listening. I haven't done that tonight. But normally——Can't I be the confidant of the old French plays, the tiring-maid with the mirror and the loyal ears?”
“Oh, what is there to confide? The people are savorless and proud of it. And even if I liked you tremendously, I couldn't talk to you without twenty old hexes watching, whispering.”
“But you will come talk to me, once in a while?”
“I'm not sure that I shall. I'm trying to develop my own large capacity for dullness and contentment. I've failed at every positive thing I've tried. I'd better 'settle down,' as they call it, and be satisfied to be—nothing.”
“Don't be cynical. It hurts me, in you. It's like blood on the wing of a humming-bird.”
“I'm not a humming-bird. I'm a hawk; a tiny leashed hawk, pecked to death by these large, white, flabby, wormy hens. But I am grateful to you for confirming me in the faith. And I'm going home!”
“Please stay and have some coffee with me.”