Tell me your side. What
is Gopher Prairie to you?"
"A bore!"
"Can I help?"
"How could you?"
"I don't know. Perhaps by listening. I haven't done that tonight.
But normally----Can't I be the confidant of the old French plays, the
tiring-maid with the mirror and the loyal ears?"
"Oh, what is there to confide? The people are savorless and proud of
it. And even if I liked you tremendously, I couldn't talk to you without
twenty old hexes watching, whispering."
"But you will come talk to me, once in a while?"
"I'm not sure that I shall. I'm trying to develop my own large capacity
for dullness and contentment. I've failed at every positive thing I've
tried. I'd better 'settle down,' as they call it, and be satisfied to
be--nothing."
"Don't be cynical. It hurts me, in you. It's like blood on the wing of a
humming-bird."
"I'm not a humming-bird. I'm a hawk; a tiny leashed hawk, pecked to
death by these large, white, flabby, wormy hens. But I am grateful to
you for confirming me in the faith. And I'm going home!"
"Please stay and have some coffee with me.
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