r before met. She had made even less
than he expected, and her intimation that he had played her a trick had
been irritating enough to prevent his reflecting that the offence might
have been in some degree with Nash. But he had recovered from his
resentment sufficiently to ask this personage, with every possible
circumstance of implied consideration for the lady, what had been the
impression made by his charming cousin.

"Upon my word, my dear fellow, I don't regard that as a fair question,"
Gabriel said. "Besides, if you think Mrs. Dallow charming what on earth
need it matter to you what I think? The superiority of one man's
opinion over another's is never so great as when the opinion's about a
woman."

"It was to help me to find out what I think of yourself," Nick returned.

"Oh, that you'll never do. I shall bewilder you to the end. The lady
with whom you were so good as to make me acquainted is a beautiful
specimen of the English garden-flower, the product of high cultivation
and much tending; a tall, delicate stem with the head set upon it in a
manner which, as a thing seen and remembered, should doubtless count for
us as a gift of the gods. She's the perfect type of the object _raised_
or bred, and everything about her hangs together and conduces to the
effect, from the angle of her elbow to the way she drops that vague,
conventional, dry little 'Oh!' which dispenses with all further
performance. That degree of completeness is always satisfying. But I
didn't satisfy her, and she didn't understand me. I don't think they
usually understand."

"She's no worse than I then."

"Ah she didn't try."

"No, she doesn't try. But she probably thought you a monster of conceit,
and she would think so still more if she were to hear you talk about her
trying."

"Very likely--very likely," said Gabriel Nash. "I've an idea a good many
people think that. It strikes me as comic. I suppose it's a result of my
little system."

"What little system?"

"Oh nothing more wonderful than the idea of being just the same to every
one. People have so bemuddled themselves that the last thing they can
conceive is that one should be simple."

"Lord, do you call yourself simple?" Nick ejaculated.

"Absolutely; in the sense of having no interest of my own to push, no
nostrum to advertise, no power to conciliate, no axe to grind. I'm not a
savage--ah far from it!--but I really think I'm perfectly independent."

"Well, that's always pro