ks it's unworthy of you to keep so many things to yourself.
That's what she wanted to express. If you thought she was trying to--to
attract you, you were very wrong."

"It's true it was an odd way, but I did think she was trying to attract
me. Forgive my depravity."

"You're very conceited. She had no interested views, and never supposed
you would think she had."

"One must be very modest then to talk with such women," Ralph said
humbly. "But it's a very strange type. She's too personal--considering
that she expects other people not to be. She walks in without knocking
at the door."

"Yes," Isabel admitted, "she doesn't sufficiently recognise the
existence of knockers; and indeed I'm not sure that she doesn't think
them rather a pretentious ornament. She thinks one's door should stand
ajar. But I persist in liking her."

"I persist in thinking her too familiar," Ralph rejoined, naturally
somewhat uncomfortable under the sense of having been doubly deceived in
Miss Stackpole.

"Well," said Isabel, smiling, "I'm afraid it's because she's rather
vulgar that I like her."

"She would be flattered by your reason!"

"If I should tell her I wouldn't express it in that way. I should say
it's because there's something of the 'people' in her."

"What do you know about the people? and what does she, for that matter?"

"She knows a great deal, and I know enough to feel that she's a kind
of emanation of the great democracy--of the continent, the country, the
nation. I don't say that she sums it all up, that would be too much to
ask of her. But she suggests it; she vividly figures it."

"You like her then for patriotic reasons. I'm afraid it is on those very
grounds I object to her."

"Ah," said Isabel with a kind of joyous sigh, "I like so many things! If
a thing strikes me with a certain intensity I accept it. I don't want to
swagger, but I suppose I'm rather versatile. I like people to be totally
different from Henrietta--in the style of Lord Warburton's sisters for
instance. So long as I look at the Misses Molyneux they seem to me
to answer a kind of ideal. Then Henrietta presents herself, and I'm
straightway convinced by her; not so much in respect to herself as in
respect to what masses behind her."

"Ah, you mean the back view of her," Ralph suggested.

"What she says is true," his cousin answered; "you'll never be serious.
I like the great country stretching away beyond the rivers and across
the prairies, blo