Part 6 (1/2)
”Difficult?”
”To get on with?”
”Not in the least. Possibly, if I may say so, a little difficult to know.”
She smiled. ”I don't usually strike people in that light.”
”Well, I think I'm afraid of boring you.”
”You couldn't if you tried from now to midnight.”
”How do you know what I mightn't do?”
”That's it. I don't know. I never _should_ know. It's only the people I'm sure of that bore me. Don't they you?”
He laughed uneasily.
”The people,” she went on, ”who are sure of _me_; who think I'm so easy to know. They don't know me, and they don't know that I know them. And they're the only people I've ever, ever met. I can tell what they're going to say before they've said it. It's always the same thing.
It's--if you like--the inevitable thing. If you can't have anything but the same thing, at least you like it put a little differently. You'd think, among them all, they might find it easy to put it a little differently sometimes; but they never do; and it's the brutal monotony of it that I cannot stand.”
”I suppose,” said Lucy, ”people _are_ monotonous.”
”They don't know,” said she, evidently ignoring his statement as inadequate, ”they don't know how sick I am of it--how insufferably it bores me.”
”Ah! there you see--that's what _I'm_ afraid of.”
”What?”
”Of saying the wrong thing--the--the same thing.”
”That's it. You'd say it differently, and it wouldn't be the same thing at all. And what's more, I should never know whether you were going to say it or not.”
”There's one thing I'd like to say to you if I knew how--if I knew how you'd take it. You see, though I think I know you----” he hesitated.
”You don't really? You don't know who I am? Or where I come from? Or where I'm going to? I don't know myself.”
”I know,” said Lucy, ”as much as I've any right to. But unluckily the thing I want to know----”
”Is what you haven't any right to?”
”I'm afraid I haven't. The thing I want to know is simply whether I can help you in any way.”
She smiled. ”Ah,” said she, ”you _have_ said it.”
”Haven't I said it differently?”
”I'm not sure. You looked different when you said it; that's something.”
”I know I've no right to say it at all. What I mean is that if I could do anything for you without boring you, without forcing myself on your acquaintance, I'd be most awfully glad. You know you needn't recognise me afterward unless you like. Have I put it differently now?”