Old Bloomsbury

"No" was the most frequent reply. "No, I haven't seen it"; "No, I haven't been there". Or simply, "I don't know". The conversation languished in a way that would have been impossible in the drawing room at Hyde Park Gate. Yet the silence was difficult, not dull. It seemed as if the standard of what was worth saying had risen so high that it was better not to break it unworthily.

-- Virginia Woolf, 'Moments of Being'