You know how it is: there are books that magically convey a secret
subtle intimation that _you_ are the only reader who has ever, will
ever, wholly grasp their elusive wit and charm. So it is with certain
people. I think of my friend Pausanias. He is quiet, shy; he makes his
points so demurely, so quaintly, that you sometimes think, sadly, of
all the occult little japes he may be making in the weeks that elapse
when you don’t see him ... and no one, perhaps, “gets” them. Folly, of
course--and yet I have seen his eye widen and brighten as it caught
mine across the dinner table, and I knew that he and I, secretly,
had both caught some faint, delicious savour of absurdity and human
queerness--something that no one else there (I strongly believed it)
had quite so sharply tasted. Yes, you can catch his eye--no word is
necessary. Just a slow, enjoying, gentle grin. Across the great clamour
of blurb and bunk, across the huge muddle of beauty, weariness, and
frustration that makes up our daily life--I am always catching his eye.