Manchurian Books

And I have no doubt that in substance it was singularly
banal. Indeed I have an impression that all our early conversations were
incredibly banal. We met several times in a manner half-accidental, half
furtive and wholly awkward. Mentally I didn't take hold of her. I never
did take hold of her mentally. Her talk, I now know all too clearly, was
shallow, pretentious, evasive. Only--even to this day--I don't remember
it as in any way vulgar. She was, I could see quite clearly, anxious
to overstate or conceal her real social status, a little desirous to
be taken for a student in the art school and a little ashamed that she
wasn't. She came to the museum to "copy things," and this, I gathered,
had something to do with some way of partially earning her living that I
wasn't to inquire into. I told her things about myself, vain things that
I felt might appeal to her, but that I learnt long afterwards made her
think me "conceited." We talked of books, but there she was very much on
her guard and secretive, and rather more freely of pictures.


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