Quicksand
“Well, Helga, you were always a little different, a little dissatisfied, though I don‘t pretend to understand you at all. I never did,” he said a little wistfully.
And Helga, who was beginning to feel that the conversation had taken an impersonal and disappointing tone, was reassured and gave him her most sympathetic smile and said almost gently: “And now let‘s talk about you. You‘re still at Naxos?“
”Yes I‘m still there. I‘m assistant principal now.”
Plainly it was a cause for enthusiastic congratulation, but Helga could only manage a tepid “How nice!” Naxos was to her too remote, too unimportant. She did not even hate it now.
How long, she asked, would James be in New York?
He couldn‘t say. Business, important business for the school, had brought him. It was, he said, another tone creeping into his
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