'

'Yes. Go on.'

She looked at him a little perplexed over the top of her fan.

'I was only going to say that what struck me particularly in that girl,
for instance, is her inaccessibility to flattery. I've watched her with
men.'

'Of course! She knew you were watching her. She no doubt thinks the eyes
of the world are upon her.'

'On the contrary, it's her unselfconsciousness that's the most
surprising thing about her. Or, no! It's something more interesting
even than that. She is conscious, in a way, of the hold she has
on the public. But it hasn't any of the deteriorating effect you
were deprecating. I've been moved once or twice to congratulate her.
She takes it as unmoved as a child. It's just as if you said to a
little thing of three, "What a clever baby you are!" or, "You've got the
most beautiful eyes in the world." The child would realize that you
meant well, that you were being pleasant, but it wouldn't think about
either its cleverness or its eyes. It's like that with Ernestine. When I
said to her, "You made an astoundingly good speech to-night. The best
I've heard even you make," she looked at me with a sort of
half-absent-minded, half-wondering expression, without a glimmer of
personal vanity. When I was so ill-advised as not to drop the subject,
when I ventured to say something more about that great gift of hers, she
interrupted me with a little laugh, "It's a sign of grace in you not to
get tired of our speeches," she said. "I suppose we repeat ourselves a
good deal. You see that's just what we've got to do. We've got to
_hammer it in_." But the fact is that she doesn't repeat herself, that
she's always fresh and stimulating, because--I suppose it's because
she's always thinking of the Great Impersonal Object, and talking about
it out of her own eager heart. Ernestine? She's as unhackneyed as a
spring morning!'

'Oh, very well. I'll go.'

'Go? Where?' for he still sat there.

'Why, to hear your paragon. I've seen that was what you were leading up
to.'

'N--no. I don't think I want you to go.'

'Oh, yes, you do. I knew you'd make me sooner or later.'

'No, don't be afraid.' She stood up.

'I'm not afraid. I'm eager,' he laughed.

She shook her head. 'No, I'll never take you.'

'Why not?'

'Because--it isn't all Ernestine and skittles. And because you'd make me
keenly alive again to all sorts of things that I see now don't
matter--things that have lost some of their power to trouble me