The Firing Line | Page 5

is not a
thought that I have which concerns you as an individual. My homily is
delivered in the abstract. Can't you--in the abstract--understand
_that_?--even if you are a bit doubtful concerning the seven deadly
conventions?"

He rested on his oars, tingling all over with wrath and surprise.
"And now," she said quietly, "I think it time to go. The sun is almost
shining, you see, and the beauty of the scene is too obvious for even
you to miss."
"May I express an opinion before you depart?"
"If it is not a very long or very dissenting opinion."
"Then it's this: two normal and wholesome people--man and a woman,
can not meet, either conventionally or unconventionally, without
expressing some atom of interest in one another as individuals. I say
two--perfectly--normal--people--"
"But it has just happened!" she insisted, preparing to rise.
"No, it has not happened."
"Really. You speak for yourself of course--"
"Yes, I do. I am interested; I'd be stupid if I were not. Besides, I
understand conventions as well as you do--"
"You don't observe them--"
"I don't worship them!"
She said coolly: "Women should be ritualists. It is safer."
"It is not necessary in this case. I haven't the slightest hope of making
this incident a foundation for another; I haven't the least idea that I shall
ever see you again. But for me to pretend an imbecile indifference to
you or to the situation would be a more absurd example of
self-consciousness than even you have charged me with."
Wrath and surprise in her turn widened her eyes; he held up his hand:
"One moment; I have not finished. May I go on?"

And, as she said nothing, he resumed: "During the few minutes we
have been accidentally thrown together, I have not seen a quiver of
human humour in you. There is the self-consciousness--the absorbed
preoccupation with appearances."
"What is there humourous in the situation?" she demanded, very pink.
"Good Lord! What is there humourous in any situation if you don't
make it so?"
"I am not a humourist," she said.
She sat in the bows, one closed hand propping her chin; and sometimes
her clear eyes, harboring lightning, wandered toward him, sometimes
toward the shore.
"Suppose you continue to row," she said at last. "I'm doing you the
honour of thinking about what you've said."
He resumed the oars, still sitting facing her, and pushed the boat slowly
forward; and, as they continued their progress in silence, her brooding
glance wavered, at intervals, between him and the coast.
"Haven't you any normal human curiosity concerning me?" he asked so
boyishly that, for a second, again from her eyes, two gay little demons
seemed to peer out and laugh at him.
But her lips were expressionless, and she only said: "I have no curiosity.
Is that criminally abnormal?"
"Yes; if it is true. Is it?"
"I suppose it is too unflattering a truth for you to believe." She checked
herself, looked up at him, hesitated. "It is not absolutely true. It was at
first. I am normally interested now. If you knew more about me you
would very easily understand my lack of interest in people I pass; the
habit of not permitting myself to be interested--the necessity of it. The
art of indifference is far more easily acquired than the art of forgetting."

"But surely," he said, "it can cost you no effort to forget me."
"No, of course not." She looked at him, unsmiling: "It was the acquired
habit of indifference in me which you mistook for--I think you mistook
it for stupidity. Many do. Did you?"
But the guilty amusement on his face answered her; she watched him
silently for a while.
"You are quite right in one way," she said; "an unconventional
encounter like this has no significance--not enough to dignify it with
any effort toward indifference. But until I began to reprove man in the
abstract, I really had not very much interest in you as an individual."
And, as he said nothing: "I might better have been in the beginning
what you call 'human'--found the situation mildly amusing--and it
_is_--though you don't know it! But"--she hesitated--"the acquired
instinct operated automatically. I wish I had been more--human; I can
be." She raised her eyes; and in them glimmered her first smile, faint,
yet so charming a revelation that the surprise of it held him motionless
at his oars.
"Have I paid the tribute you claim?" she asked. "If I have, may I not go
overboard at my convenience?"
He did not answer. She laid both arms along the gunwales once more,
balancing herself to rise.
"We are near enough now," she said, "and the fog is quite gone. May I
thank you and depart without further arousing you to psychological
philosophy?"
"If