Once I read to my girlfriend over the phone, because we were very far apart and had nothing else to do. I read a good section I'd just discovered, out of E. M. Forster's A Passage to India, a rich descriptive bit near the beginning that paints a small town in colonial India, getting into the geology and the lay of the land, as well as the social scene. In those days, whenever I thought of beautiful nature, especially landscapes, I thought of her. That little town in the book, and the hills that surround it, and the water coming down, and the strange separation between the Indians and the English, were so vivid in my mind I couldn't wait to share it with her. And I thought I had a good way of reading—even she said so once, though it was ages before all this. So I wound up my humblest, most dynamic voice and went through, breathed out two pages, listening for her response all the way. Then I stopped and waited. It wasn't a final finish, just a tidy one, and she didn't say anything, so I said, "That's it." Then I said, "What did you think?" She said, "It was nice."

I was well infatuated with her then and I knew she was subtle, didn't shout out her thoughts like some would; no, she was quiet and kept things to herself; I reckoned that she let things sink in a lot before saying a little something, and that was a fine quality she had. So I waited.

A while later I read a whole story to her. This took a good long time, and I had to stop and rest a few times. I asked her how it was going when I rested. "Okay," she said. "I can stop," I said. "No," she said. So I read the whole story, and it was a decent story, with various actions and intentions in it, which we could have discussed, if we were hard pressed, and we were. It was a long way from her to me and it was hard to keep things going but we did because we cared terrifically about each other, or so I think, and each thought the other was really special, and still does. When I finished the story I asked her what she thought. "Nice," she said. I waited a good while to see if anything else would come and nothing did. I hung up and went to bed. Times like these took their toll and we ended up parting ways, but two years later I still feel we made a mistake. Who did the wrong thing, whether I did too much or her too little, I still can't tell.