It was a pity that Mr. Cardan could not hear what his hostess was saying. He would have been delighted; she was talking about herself. It was a subject on which he specially loved to hear her. There were few people, he used to say, whose Authorized Version of themselves differed so strikingly from that Revised, formed of them by others. It was not often, however, that she gave him a chance to compare them. With Mr. Cardan she was always a little shy; he had known her so long.
"Sometimes," Mrs. Aldwinkle was saying, as she walked with Chelifer on the second of the three terraces, "sometimes I wish I were less sensitive. I feel everything so acutely - every slightest thing. It's like being … like being …" she fumbled in the air with groping fingers, feeling for the right word, "like being flayed," she concluded triumphantly, and looked at her companion.
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