hing. I like you; I am interested by you.
Perhaps if you had a different nature I might even love you. But I can
never love an echo, and you are an echo."

"An echo is often more beautiful than the voice it repeats," he said.

"But if the voice is quite ugly the echo cannot be beautiful," she
answered. "I do not wish to be too frank, but as you have asked me to
marry you I will say this. Your character seems to me to be an echo of
Mr. Amarinth's. I believe that he merely poses; but do those who imitate
him merely pose? Do you merely pose? What Mr. Amarinth really is it is
quite impossible to tell. Perhaps there is nothing real about him at
all. Perhaps, as he has said, his real man is only a Mrs. Harris. He may
be abnormal _au fond_; but you are not! What is your real self? Is it
what I see, what I know?"

"Expression is my life," Lord Reggie said in a rather offended voice,
drawing away his hand. A red spot appeared in each of his cheeks. He
began to realise that he was refused because he was not admired. It
seemed almost incredible.

"Then the expression that I see is you?" she asked.

"I suppose so," he replied, with a tinge of exceedingly boyish
sulkiness.

"Then, till you have got rid of it never ask a woman to marry you. Men
like you do not understand women. They do not try to; probably they
could not if they did. Men like you are so twisted and distorted in mind
that they cannot recognise their own distortion. It seems to me that Mr.
Amarinth has created a cult. Let me call it the cult of the green
carnation. I suppose it may be called modern. To me it seems very silly
and rather wicked. If you would take that hideous green flower out of
your coat, not because I asked you to, but because you hated it
honestly, I might answer your question differently. If you could forget
what you call art, if you could see life at all with a straight,
untrammelled vision, if you could be like a man, instead of like nothing
at all in heaven or earth except that dyed flower, I might perhaps care
for you in the right way. But your mind is artificially coloured: it
comes from the dyer's. It is a green carnation; and I want a natural
blossom to wear in my heart."

She got up.

"You are not angry with me?" she asked.

Lord Reggie's face was scarlet.

"You talk very much like ordinary people," he said, a little rude in his
hurt self-love.

"I am ordinary," she said. "I am so glad of it. I think that after this
week I shal