She was rather second class, I
believe, and particularly fancied the duchess part."
"It wouldn't be like that in the current novels, or even in the better:
either your grandparent or the duchess would be a villainous person,
and the other a victim. I'm inclined to think that most of the ideas
about life and conduct are lifted from cheap fiction. They have the
look of it. But that realization wouldn't help us, with the world
entirely on the other side."
"No, it isn't," Claire objected; "and it's getting less so all around
us. Perhaps men haven't changed much, yet; but you don't hear the women
talk as I do. I don't like them, as I said; they are too damned
skulking for me; but they are gathering a lot more sense in a short
while."
"I don't agree with you there," he replied; "you are getting your own
infinitesimal world confused with the real overwhelming majority; you
haven't an idea how it feels and, in particular, of what it thinks of
you, smoking and gambling and damning your fate. It may be largely
envy--personally I am convinced it is--but they have you ticketed
straight for hell just the same."
"It doesn't interest me." Claire increasingly showed the strain, the
unhappiness, through which she was parsing. Nor did it him, he ended
lamely, except in the abstract. This at once had the elements of a lie
and the unelaborate truth; he couldn't see how his curiosity applied to
him, and yet he was intent on its solving.
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