Of course, in years, I'm old enough to be your
mother." (By the register I should say she might have been thirty-
two, but looked twenty-six. I was twenty-three, and I fear foolish
for my age.) "But you know the world, and you're so different to
the other people one meets. Society is so hollow and artificial;
don't you find it so? You don't know how I long sometimes to get
away from it, to know someone to whom I could show my real self,
who would understand me. You'll come and see me sometimes--I'm
always at home on Wednesdays--and let me talk to you, won't you,
and you must tell me all your clever thoughts."
It occurred to me that, maybe, she would like to hear a few of them
there and then, but before I had got well started a hollow Society
man came up and suggested supper, and she was compelled to leave
me. As she disappeared, however, in the throng, she looked back
over her shoulder with a glance half pathetic, half comic, that I
understood. It said, "Pity me, I've got to be bored by this vapid,
shallow creature," and I did.
I sought her through all the rooms before I went. I wished to
assure her of my sympathy and support.
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