" Frances stammered badly.
She knew I did not encourage her wild theories.
"Something she feels--yes," I helped her, more than curious.
"Oh, you know what I mean, Bill," she said desperately. "That the place
is saturated with some influence that she is herself too positive or too
stupid to interpret. She's trying to make herself negative and
receptive, as she calls it, but can't, of course, succeed. Haven't you
noticed how dull and impersonal and insipid she seems, as though she had
no personality? She thinks impressions will come to her that way. But
they don't--"
"Naturally."
"So she's trying me--us--what she calls the sensitive and impressionable
artistic temperament. She says that until she is sure exactly what this
influence is, she can't fight it, turn it out, 'get the house straight',
as she phrases it."
Remembering my own singular impressions, I felt more lenient than I
might otherwise have done. I tried to keep impatience out of my voice.
"And this influence, what--whose is it?"
We used the pronoun that followed in the same breath, for I answered my
own question at the same moment as she did:
"His." Our heads nodded involuntarily towards the floor, the dining room
being directly underneath.
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