She is after all a woman, I thought, and felt like testing her.
“Do you like novels?”
“I?” She made a pause after the word, and then said ambiguously: “Well in a way.” She seemed not to care much about novel-reading.
“Perhaps you are not sure yourself that you like or you do not like reading-novels?”
“What difference does it make if one likes or not likes novels?” Novels seemed to have no claim to existence in her mind.
“It would not matter, then, if one read them from the beginning or from the end, or from any page one happened to open. I should think, you need not be so curious about my way of reading.”
“But you and I are different.”
“In what way, please.” I looked into the woman’s eyes, thinking, I was testing her. But they spoke nothing.
“Ho, ho, ho, you don’t see?”
“But you must have read a good many in your younger days?” I made a little detour, instead of keeping straight to my point.