Sep 19, 2026 · 7 hr 9 min · 48 segments
"Two Sides of a Question" by May Sinclair delves into the complexities of human experience, exploring the dualities that shape our understanding of life and relationships. This thought-provoking work…
He could find no beauty in Miss Tancred.
She was useless for his purposes.
Those lips had never learned to flirt, to chatter, to sing, to do anything spontaneous and natural and pleasing.
He shook hands with her in a paralytic manner, battering his brains for a reply to her polite commonplaces.
Inwardly he was furious.
He felt that he had been duped, tricked, infamously cheated of his legitimate desire, and he hated the woman as if she, poor soul, had been personally responsible.
It had bored him to listen to the Colonel, and he was sure it would bore him still more to talk to Miss Tancred.
But for ten minutes he did his best to sustain a miraculous flow of sparkling monologue.
If Miss Tancred was going to bore him, at any rate it would not be by her conversation.
Some plain women he had known who had overcome plainness by vivacity and charm.
Not so Miss Tancred.
Being plainer than most, she was bound to make a more than ordinary effort.
Yet she had adopted the ways of a consummately pretty woman who knows that nothing further is required of her.
Did she think that he would go on forever battering his brains to create conversation out of nothing, when she clearly intimated that it was not worth her while to help him? Never in his life had he met a woman who inspired him with such invincible repugnance.
He found himself talking to her at random like a man in a dream, and so indifferent to her opinion that he was not in the least distressed at his own imbecility.
And Miss Tancred, like a lady in a dream, seemed to find his attitude entirely natural.
Perhaps she had read a similar antagonism in the faces of other men.
As it happened, repugnance was an emotion that Durant had frequently felt before, and certain emphatic lines about his nose and mouth had apparently been drawn there on purpose to express it.
Anyhow, Miss Tancred made no attempt to engage his attention, but turned her dull eyes to the Colonel as if appealing to him to take the burden of Durant's entertainment on his own shoulders.
This the Colonel was perfectly prepared to do.
It was evidently an understood thing that Miss Tancred should sit there in that depressing attitude while her father monopolized their guest.
Durant hastily classified his host and hostess as the bore active and the bore passive.
If Miss Tancred had ever had any interest or property in life, she seemed to have made it over to the Colonel, together with a considerable portion of her youth.
The Colonel wore his sixty years well out of sight, like an undergarment.
You even felt that there might be something slightly indecorous in the suggestion that he wore them at all.
He could find no beauty in Miss Tancred.
She was useless for his purposes.
Those lips had never learned to flirt, to chatter, to sing, to do anything spontaneous and natural and pleasing.
He shook hands with her in a paralytic manner, battering his brains for a reply to her polite commonplaces.
Inwardly he was furious.
He felt that he had been duped, tricked, infamously cheated of his legitimate desire, and he hated the woman as if she, poor soul, had been personally responsible.
It had bored him to listen to the Colonel, and he was sure it would bore him still more to talk to Miss Tancred.
But for ten minutes he did his best to sustain a miraculous flow of sparkling monologue.
If Miss Tancred was going to bore him, at any rate it would not be by her conversation.
Some plain women he had known who had overcome plainness by vivacity and charm.
Not so Miss Tancred.
Being plainer than most, she was bound to make a more than ordinary effort.
Yet she had adopted the ways of a consummately pretty woman who knows that nothing further is required of her.
Did she think that he would go on forever battering his brains to create conversation out of nothing, when she clearly intimated that it was not worth her while to help him? Never in his life had he met a woman who inspired him with such invincible repugnance.
He found himself talking to her at random like a man in a dream, and so indifferent to her opinion that he was not in the least distressed at his own imbecility.
And Miss Tancred, like a lady in a dream, seemed to find his attitude entirely natural.
Perhaps she had read a similar antagonism in the faces of other men.
As it happened, repugnance was an emotion that Durant had frequently felt before, and certain emphatic lines about his nose and mouth had apparently been drawn there on purpose to express it.
Anyhow, Miss Tancred made no attempt to engage his attention, but turned her dull eyes to the Colonel as if appealing to him to take the burden of Durant's entertainment on his own shoulders.
This the Colonel was perfectly prepared to do.
It was evidently an understood thing that Miss Tancred should sit there in that depressing attitude while her father monopolized their guest.
Durant hastily classified his host and hostess as the bore active and the bore passive.
If Miss Tancred had ever had any interest or property in life, she seemed to have made it over to the Colonel, together with a considerable portion of her youth.
The Colonel wore his sixty years well out of sight, like an undergarment.
You even felt that there might be something slightly indecorous in the suggestion that he wore them at all.
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