that I am met with almost too much sympathy and tact, so that one
falls into an egotistical mood. It is difficult, too, I find, to be
as frank in talking with women as with men; because I think that
women tend more than men to hold a preconceived idea of one's
character and tastes; and it is difficult to talk simply and
naturally to any one who has formed a mental picture of one,
especially if one is aware that it is not correct. But men are
slower to form impressions, and thus talk is more experimental;
moreover, in talking with men, one encounters more opposition, and
opposition puts one more on one's mettle.

Thus a tete-a-tete with a man of similar tastes, who is just and
yet sympathetic, critical yet appreciative, whose point of view
just differs enough to make it possible for him to throw sidelights
on a subject, and to illumine aspects of it that were unperceived
and neglected--this is a high intellectual pleasure, a potion to be
delicately sipped at leisure.

But after all it is impossible to say what makes a
conversationalist. There are people who seem to possess every
qualification for conversing except the power to converse. The two
absolutely essential things are, in the first place, a certain
charm of mind and even manner, which is a purely instinctive gift;
and, in the second place, real sympathy with, real interest in the
deuteragonist.

People can be useful talkers, even interesting talkers, without
these gifts. One may like to hear what a man of vigorous mind may
have to say on a subject that he knows well, even if he is
unsympathetic. But then one listens in a receptive frame of mind,