Martin Elliott crossed to Muriel's side. "How much am I to take seriously from that madwoman? Do you really take sewing-classes? I think that must be rather interesting, because all teaching is rather fun, I think, don't you? If only one's pupils are kind to one; but sewing must be more satisfactory than most things, because you can actually see the work growing under your fingers."
"I know what you mean. But I don't really do much sewing."
"You read then?"
"Not much now. I used to, but the books in the Kingsport libraries are all so much alike, and one gets out of the way of ordering other things."
She spoke diffidently. It was incredible that a man should really want to talk to her about herself. Men talked about motors, or their own insides, or hunting.
Martin Elliott smiled at her. "Have you found that too? Don't you think about the books in most circulating libraries that they are nearly all the wrong way round. Short stories with happy endings and long stories with sad ones. Quite wrong."
"Why that?"
"Ah, surely the short story should end with tragedy, for only sorrow swoops upon you with a sudden blow. But happiness is built up from long years of small delightful things. You can't put them into a short story."
It was true. Muriel looked across at Delia sitting by the tea-table in her red dress. She thought, "This is what he means. Years of sitting by Delia in a firelit room full of books and talking pleasant nonsense. Friends who know what you mean and speak your own language. Rain-washed gardens when the birds call. Work that's fine and hard and reaches somewhere. Marriage, such as theirs will be. Children, perhaps, and laughter that they share. You can't put all those into a short story."
She felt cold and dull, shut out from a world of small delightful things. She made no answer, sitting with her chin on her hand, while the talk flowed round her, talk of books, and socialism, and plays, and people that they knew, and what you ought to take on a walking tour, and whether Sir Rabindranath Tagore should have won the Nobel prize, and school care committees. (They weren't really any use, Mr. Vaughan said.) And all the time she felt herself being drawn to Martin Elliott by surprised delight. She was at home at last, among people who spoke her own language, even though the things of which they spoke were strange. She felt as though after many years she had returned to her own country. But she never spoke.