Page:Dorothy Canfield - Rough-hewn.djvu/465

 was opening his. But he was stricken with shyness, with a fear lest he had misunderstood, lest he say the wrong thing. He could only look at her hopelessly. What a clumsy, heavy-handed china-smasher he was, anyhow!

But such glimpses of what lay beneath the surface did not come often, though he thought about them a great deal. He wondered if there was any connection between them and her evident habit of not talking seriously, of bantering keenly about superficial things, rather than giving any idea of what she was really thinking. Perhaps she did not trust people enough to give them any idea of what she was really thinking. Perhaps she fell into that grim mood when she thought seriously. Why should she? And yet she was always making him talk seriously, about ideas he really cared about.

Once he said to her clumsily, "I must bore you to death, with all these half-baked ideas of mine, when you're used to such brilliant talkers."

She startled him with the energy and vivacity of her answer, "Oh, I hate what you call brilliant talkers. I'm so sick of them! You can't imagine what it is to me, like a long drink of clear water, to hear somebody trying to say what he really thinks."

He asked, sincerely and naïvely at a loss, "Why, why does anybody talk at all, if not to say what he thinks?"

She answered, with a certain smile of hers which always made him uneasy, a dry, ugly smile, "Don't you realize that the real purpose of talk is to pull the wool over the eyes of the person you are talking to, to make him think you are more clever than you are, and to get something out of him for yourself that he would not let you have if he knew you were taking it?"

Then with one of her lightning changes to that melting look and smile before which he always succumbed wholly, she went on, "The truth is that I hope all the time that in your thinking over and over there may be a hint for me, who was never taught to do the least bit of thinking for myself. So go on, let me see it all, just as it comes. Let me pick out for myself what will be of use to me."

Well, if she wanted that, she should have it—or anything