nguage and not knowing what we mean;
wanting the things we want, and not knowing why we want them; aping our
weaknesses, exaggerating our follies, ignoring or ridiculing all we care
about--you come from hotels as big as towns, and from towns as flimsy as
paper, where the streets haven't had time to be named, and the buildings
are demolished before they're dry, and the people are as proud of
changing as we are of holding to what we have--and we're fools enough
to imagine that because you copy our ways and pick up our slang
you understand anything about the things that make life decent and
honourable for us!"

He stopped again, his white face and drawn nostrils giving him so much
the look of an extremely distinguished actor in a fine part that, in
spite of the vehemence of his emotion, his silence might have been the
deliberate pause for a replique. Undine kept him waiting long enough to
give the effect of having lost her cue--then she brought out, with a
little soft stare of incredulity: "Do you mean to say you're going to
refuse such an offer?"

"Ah--!" He turned back from the door, and picking up the letter that lay
on the table between them, tore it in pieces and tossed the pieces on
the floor. "That's how I refuse it!"

The violence of his tone and gesture made her feel as though the
fluttering strips were so many lashes laid across her face, and a rage
that was half fear possessed her.

"How dare you speak to me like that? Nobody's ever dared to before. Is
talking to a woman in that way one of the things you call decent and
honourable? Now that I know what you feel about me I don't want to stay
in your house another day. And I don't mean to--I mean to walk out of it
this very hour!"

For a moment they stood face to face, the depths of their mutual
incomprehension at last bared to each other's angry eyes; then Raymond,
his glance travelling past her, pointed to the fragments of paper on the
floor.

"If you're capable of that you're capable of anything!" he said as he
went out of the room.

XLIII

She watched him go in a kind of stupour, knowing that when they next met
he would be as courteous and self-possessed as if nothing had happened,
but that everything would nevertheless go on in the same way--in HIS
way--and that there was no more hope of shaking his resolve or altering
his point of view than there would have been of transporting the
deep-rooted masonry of Saint Desert by means of the wheeled su