at sight for a mere whim; when it was good form to take off your sword in the antechamber, and give your friend your dagger-hand, to show him it was no business visit.  Similarly, you keep up this babblement to show your mind has no sinister concentration, not necessarily because you have anything to say, but as a guarantee of good faith.  You have to make a noise all the time, like the little boy who was left in the room with the plums.  It is the only possible explanation.

To a logical mind there is something very distressing in this social law of gabble.  Out of regard for Mrs. A, let us say, I attend some festival she has inaugurated.  There I meet for the first time a young person of pleasant exterior, and I am placed in her company to deliver her at a dinner-table, or dance her about, or keep her out of harm’s way, in a cosy nook.  She has also never seen me before, and probably does not want particularly to see me now.  However, I find her nice to look at, and she has taken great pains to make herself nice to look at, and why we cannot pass the evening, I looking at her and she being looked at, I cannot imagine.  But no; we must talk.  Now, possibly there are topics she knows about and I do not—­it is unlikely, but suppose so; on these topics she requires no information.  Again, I know about other topics things unknown to her, and it seems a mean and priggish thing to broach these, since they put her at a disadvantage.  Thirdly, comes a last group of subjects upon which we are equally informed, and upon which, therefore, neither of us is justified in telling things to the other.  This classification of topics seems to me exhaustive.

These considerations, I think, apply to all conversations.  In every conversation, every departure must either be a presumption when you talk into your antagonist’s special things, a pedantry when you fall back upon your own, or a platitude when you tell each other things you both know.  I don’t see any other line a conversation can take.  The reason why one has to keep up the stream of talk is possibly, as I have already suggested, to manifest goodwill.  And in so many cases this could be expressed so much better by a glance, a deferential carriage, possibly in some cases a gentle pressure of the hand, or a quiet persistent smile.  And suppose there is some loophole in my reasoning—­though I cannot see it—­and that possible topics exist, how superficial and unexact is the best conversation to a second-rate book!

Even with two people you see the objection, but when three or four are gathered together the case is infinitely worse to a man of delicate perceptions.  Let us suppose—­I do not grant it—­that there is a possible sequence of things to say to the person A that really harmonise with A and yourself.  Grant also that there is a similar sequence between yourself and B. Now, imagine yourself and A and B at the corners of an equilateral triangle set down to talk to each other.  The kind of talk that A appreciates