““I hear echoes in your prose, echoes that run back to stuffy English drawing rooms and American universities. Is that what Canadians aspire to sound like?" She had taken a cigarette without appearing to watch what she was doing, and lighted it from a box of kitchen matches. I needed a cigarette myself, but was too wrapped up in what was being said to me to attempt to smoke. Gertrude blew a large smoke ring across the gap between us and watched it drift towards the ceiling.””