She was writing a play, but she did not speak about that either.
But she talked a lot when she got more used to us very much as
she used to talk at school, about impersonal things. I felt her
inhuman, and too odd; it had not mattered so much when she was
a child; but she was attractive still, in her own queer way.
You couldn’t help wondering what she was thinking about, and
wanting to know. George and Hugo liked talking to her, but not
Guy.
He said:
‘She is too clever for me, I can’t live up to it.’
But Guy said that very easily—it was almost a pose in Guy.
Hugo understood her from the first. It was extraordinary how
his mind seemed to interpret hers. I don’t know how else to describe
it. But it was very often like that, as though she were speaking
a foreign language and only Hugo understood. You would not have
expected that at first, for they were so different, Hugo so gracious
and lovable and gentle, and Sophia so fierce and buttoned up.
And Hugo was not tolerant and easy-going like Mollie; he was
easily jarred upon and irritated if people and things were ‘Wrong’—but
Sophia never jarred upon him, even when she seemed rude and ungracious,
and she had a curious influence upon him, in his most special
things.
He began to read Russian novels, which he had not liked before,
and he went with her to odd meetings of Russian Anarchists, ‘Friends
of Freedom’ they were called. She tried at one time to persuade
him to go to Russia and help the Revolution. Guy was worried
about it, and so was I; we thought Hugo might really go; but
George said no, he wouldn’t, and George, of course, was right.
It sometimes surprises me to think how often George was right;
instinctively, too, we asked for George’s opinion, and were satisfied
by it to a great extent; funny George, with his wide, humorous
mouth; dear George, with his steady eyes. I don’t know which
side of him was best.