Page:Encounters (Bowen).djvu/120

 life have made food less an indulgence than a necessity. She believed that she was interesting him.

"My idea in life, my particular form of egoism, is a determination not to be swamped. I resent most fearfully, not the claims my family make on me, but the claims I make on my family. Theirs are a tribute to my indispensability, mine, a proof of my dependence. Therefore I am a perfectly charming woman, but quite extraordinarily selfish. That is how all my friends describe me. I admire their candour, but I never congratulate them on their perspicacity. My egoism is nothing if not blatant and unblushing.

"Now you go on!" she said encouragingly, helping herself to salad. "Tell me about your selfishness, then I'll define how it's different from mine."

He did not appear inspired.

"Yours is a much better kind," she supplemented. "Finer. You have given up everything but the thing that won't be given up. In fact, there's nothing wrong in your sort of egoism. It's only your self-consciousness that brings it to life at all. In the middle