kindness at no cost, beliefs found only on exit

Even Hal's warmth toward his Little Buddies is held at a remove: he likes the minilectures and the being-there-to-come-to, but the appeal he names is that it is kindness that costs him nothing, connection with the friction taken out. And he is opaque enough to himself that he learns his own convictions only by hearing them leave his mouth, so that the interior is not a place he speaks from but a place he discovers, secondhand, in the act of performing for an audience of children.