“You talked together for two hours in a corner,” said the Woman of the World.  “I asked him when you had gone what he thought of you.  ‘Ah! what a talker!’ he exclaimed, making a gesture of admiration with his hands.  ‘I thought maybe you would notice it,’ I answered him.  ‘Tell me, what did he talk about?’ I was curious to know; you had been so absorbed in yourselves and so oblivious to the rest of us.  ‘Upon my word,’ he replied, ’I really cannot tell you.  Do you know, I am afraid, now I come to think of it, that I must have monopolised the conversation.’  I was glad to be able to ease his mind on that point.  ‘I really don’t think you did,’ I assured him.  I should have felt equally confident had I not been present.”

“You were quite correct,” returned the Minor Poet.  “I have a distinct recollection of having made one or two observations myself.  Indeed, if I may say so, I talked rather well.”

“You may also recollect,” continued the Woman of the World, “that the next time we met I asked you what he had said, and that your mind was equally a blank on the subject.  You admitted you had found him interesting.  I was puzzled at the time, but now I begin to understand.  Both of you, no doubt, found the conversation so brilliant, each of you felt it must have been your own.”

“A good book,” I added—­“a good talk is like a good dinner:  one assimilates it.  The best dinner is the dinner you do not know you have eaten.”

“A thing will often suggest interesting thought,” observed the Old Maid, “without being interesting.  Often I find the tears coming into my eyes as I witness some stupid melodrama—­something said, something hinted at, will stir a memory, start a train of thought.”

“I once,” I said, “sat next to a country-man in the pit of a music-hall some years ago.  He enjoyed himself thoroughly up to half-past ten.  Songs about mothers-in-law, drunken wives, and wooden legs he roared at heartily.  At ten-thirty entered a well-known artiste who was then giving a series of what he called ’Condensed Tragedies in Verse.’  At the first two my country friend chuckled hugely.  The third ran:  ’Little boy; pair of skates:  broken ice; heaven’s gates.’  My friend turned white, rose hurriedly, and pushed his way impatiently out of the house.  I left myself some ten minutes later, and by chance ran against him again in the bar of the ‘Criterion,’ where he was drinking whisky rather copiously.  ’I couldn’t stand that fool,’ he explained to me in a husky voice.  ’Truth is, my youngest kid got drowned last winter skating.  Don’t see any sense making fun of real trouble.’”