"You are very nice," I replied.
"I do not want to be beautiful," she continued severely. "Why should
I? I have no interest in such things. I am interested only in living,
and living is thinking; but I demand access to my fellows who are
alive. Perhaps, I did not pay those others enough attention. How
could I? They cannot think. They cannot speak. They make a
complicated verbal noise, but all I am able to translate from it is,
that a something called lip-salve can be bought in some particular shop
one penny cheaper than it can in a certain other shop. They will
twitter for hours about the way a piece of ribbon was stitched to a hat
which they saw in a tramcar. They agitate themselves wondering whether
a muff should be this size or that size?--I say, they depress me, and
if I do turn my back on them when men are present I am only acting
sensibly and justly. Why cannot they twitter to each other and let me
and other people alone?"