‘He is no particular friend of mine. He is a wood-engraver, and writes also, I believe, for the newspapers.’
‘He can talk as well as write.’
‘Yes, he can talk very well.’
‘Do you not think there was something unreal about what he said?’
‘I do not believe he is actually insincere. I have noticed that men who write or read much often appear somewhat shadowy.’
‘How do you account for it?’
‘What they say is not experience.’
‘I do not quite understand. A man may think much which can never become an experience in your sense of the word, and be very much in earnest with what he thinks; the thinking is an experience.’
‘Yes, I suppose so, but it is what a person has gone through which I like to hear. Poor Dennis has suffered much. You are perhaps surprised, but it is true, and when he leaves politics alone he is a different creature.’
‘I am afraid I must be very uninteresting to you?’