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Young People's Pride by Stephen Vincent Benét
page 50 of 227 (22%)
a conversational jumping-off place. His mind, always a little on edge now
with work and bad feeding, has been too busy since they came in comparing
Rose Severance with Elinor Piper, and wondering why, when one is so like a
golden-skinned August pear and the other a branch of winter blackberries
against snow just fallen, it is not as good but somehow warmer to think of
the first against your touch than the second, to leave him wholly at ease.

"Yes--funny stuff," Mrs. Severance's voice is musically quiet. "And then
you tell them to people who pretend to know all about what they mean--and
then--" She shrugs shoulders at the Freudian two across the shoulder-high
partition.

"But you don't believe in all this psycho-analysis tosh, do you?"

She hesitates. "A little, yes. Like the old woman and ghosts. I may not
believe in it but I'm afraid of it, rather."

She gives him a steady look--her eyes go deep. It is not so much the
intensity of the look as its haltingness that makes warmth go over him.

"Shall we tell our dreams--the favorite ones, I mean? Play fair if we do,
remember," she adds slowly.

"Not if you're really afraid."

"I? But it's just because I am afraid that I really should, you know. Like
going into a dark room when you don't want to."

"But they can't be as scary as _that_, surely." Ted's voice is a little
false. Both are watching each other intently now--he with a puzzled sense
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