"I don't know what else to do, since you certainly aren't laughing at me. You might be an owl for gravity. You sit screwed up there in your corner as if you were afraid you might be infected with something if you came within a quarter of a mile of me." "Put it the other way. I don't wish to carry infection to you." "Don't you? How nice! What sort of infection do you think you'd carry? I'd like, if I did ask you to come nearer, to know the risk I'd run." "You know the kind of creature I am." "The ignorance is on your side; you don't know the kind of creature I am. Do you know this is the very first time you and I have been alone together in a taxicab?" He was silent. A sound came from her which might have been a laugh. "You're full of conversation." "I am so oppressed by the hideous consciousness of being in a false position." "Are you? We'll talk about all that kind of thing when we get to 197 Lavender Sweep." "You don't know what kind of place it is I live in." "I soon shall." "What would your uncle say if he knew you were coming alone with me to my wretched rooms?" "My uncle and I are two; he lives at Nuthurst, and I live in town. I also have what you call wretched rooms--of my own. I would have asked the man to drive us there, only I thought I would prefer to go to yours, and I should; and I'm going. Is anything very terrible about your wretched rooms?" "A person of my sort ought to be glad to live anywhere; especially after some of the places in which I have resided." "I know all about it." "What do you mean?" "Oh, I've been told; but would you mind leaving all that sort of thing until we get to your--wretched rooms? Let us, while we are in the cab, be frivolous; couldn't you be frivolous?" "I've forgotten how to be." "I believe you smiled." "If I did it was the sort of smile with which you meet the dentist when he's going to play tricks with your teeth." "It's some time since I was frivolous; it's rather hard that now, after all this time, I'm in a mood to frivol, you won't. Couldn't you try? For instance, you seem to have forgotten that I possess a name; couldn't you start by calling me Violet? I suppose it would be too much to expect you to get as far, at the start, as Vi?" There was silence. "Well, are you trying?" "I'm trying not to." "Thank you very much; does it require much effort?" "All my strength." "Have you got much?" "Very little." "Indeed? Then, if you're going to use it in that direction, I hope you've none at all. It's rather fine weather for the time of the year, isn't it? Is that the sort of remark you would like me to make? Will it need all your strength to enable you to answer that?" "I wish you'd let me stop the cab and get out."