and she told him of course that there was something truly scary about stupidity made coherent and he was only too glad to wolf down the hint and get up and negotiate the recalcitrant yale of her small flat but that was not what she had meant at all and she wrestled him back into submission at her tea table and proffered a new cup and teabags of different hues and he had to concede defeat once more and whenever he stopped talking she would extend her foot under the tea table and she stepped on his foot as hard as she could and she was strangely wearing winter boots inside her small flat and thus he had appreciably valid motives for supplying her with a dependable flow of conversation .