He was frightfully startled. His “No” sounded as though he couldn’t quite remember.
She seemed much amused. You wouldn’t have believed that this superior quizzical woman who tapped her fingers carelessly on her slim exquisite knee had ever sobbed in the night.
“Oh, that wasn’t a personal question,” she said. “I just wanted to know what you’re like. Don’t you ever collect people? I do—chloroform ’em quite cruelly and pin their poor little corpses out on nice clean corks…. You live alone in New York, do you?”
“Y-yes.”
“Who do you play with—know?”
“Not—not much of anybody. Except maybe Charley Carpenter. He’s assistant bookkeeper for the Souvenir Company. “He had wanted to, and immediately decided not to, invent grandes mondes whereof he was an intimate.
“What do—oh, you know—people in New York who don’t go to parties or read much—what do they do for amusement? I’m so interested in types.”
“Well—” said he.
That was all he could say till he had digested a pair of thoughts: Just what did she mean by “types”? Had it something to do with printing stories? And what could he say about the people, anyway? He observed:
“Oh, I don’t know—just talk about—oh, cards and jobs and folks and things and—oh, you know; go to moving pictures and vaudeville and go to Coney Island and—oh, sleep.”