“I’ll leave you out for fear of embarrassing you . . .,” I began.
Barbara laughed sadly and turned, with a shrug, to the fire:
“No, my dear, you’re leaving me out because you despise me. Not cruelly, but just in the Oakleigh way: as a tolerant Turk would despise me. In your eyes, we’ve never grown up; and sometimes you shew us the tenderness you’d shew to a child. You think we’re creatures who’ve failed to be men; you don’t imagine that we’ve never tried to be men. . . . You smile benignly on our little foibles and follies and frailties just as I smile at a kitten chasing its own tail. ‘Kittens will be kittens,’ I say; ‘women will be women,’ you murmur to yourself.”
“The trouble is that you speak the same language . . .”
“But we don’t think the same thoughts. D’you remember my telling you I’d forgotten certain things you’d said?”
As her eyes turned slowly to meet mine, I thought I could see a gentle new light of friendship.
“I wished at the time you’d said you had forgiven them,” I answered.
“There was nothing to forgive. You were right, from your point of view. May I speak of it?”
“If it will help us.”
Barbara turned once more to the fire and sat with her cheek resting against her hand: