Young People's Pride by Stephen Vincent Benét
page 50 of 227 (22%)
page 50 of 227 (22%)
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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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