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Description of  The Absurdity Is - Just That It Should Be - Absurd

An exerpt from the beginning of the story: There was no very logical reason why she should feel annoyed at the young man's taking the vacant seat beside her in the car. So far as she could see, there was nowhere else for him to sit. He was a perfectly presentable young man--slender, straight, intelligent-looking, perfectly well dressed without being a bit "dressed up." and, from her point of view, just the right age to make him interesting--three or four years older than she was, for a guess, which would make him twenty-three or -four years old. His manner, too, would have satisfied the strictest martinet among the teachers at the extremely fastidious finishing school which, last June, had guaranteed her to be a finished product. He made her a very slight bow,--obviously an entirely impersonal concession to civility,--and then. taking no more room than was absolutely necessary, sat down and paid no further attention to her. That was not why she was annoyed, however. Heaven knew, the last thing she wanted, this morning, was a silly quasi-flirtation with a good-looking stranger who might, conceivably, have tried to begin with a show of somewhat warmer concern over having to disturb her, and then, by lowering the window or adjusting the blind for her, pave the way for the beginning of a conversation. It was lucky for the young man that these had not been his tactics. But the notion that stuck in her mind with such burr-like and irritating persistency was that six months ago, or three, or perhaps even one, she would have been silly enough to like that sort of thing and to hope that it might happen. Nothing like it ever had happened but she was perfectly aware that, up to not very long ago, she had kept a decorously adventurous eye open for just such an encounter.