|
The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Touchstone by Edith Wharton: wouldn't spoil the afternoon by making people talk; though he
reduced his annoyance to the minimum by not listening to what was
said, there remained a latent irritation against the general
futility of words.
His wife's gift of silence seemed to him the most vivid commentary
on the clumsiness of speech as a means of intercourse, and his
eyes had turned to her in renewed appreciation of this finer
faculty when Mrs. Armiger's voice abruptly brought home to him the
underrated potentialities of language.
"You've read them, of course, Mrs. Glennard?" he heard her ask;
and, in reply to Alexa's vague interrogation--"Why, the 'Aubyn
| 
