She laughed at that, and turned towards the door.
"I know—I know. I'm very queer, most awfully queer, in the eyes of every one. But I can tell you, as I tell them, that the worst of it is only for a little while. Just a few brief weeks and I shall be again, in most ways, a normal woman. A woman just like all the rest again," her back was towards him now, "in most thing—in most things."
"Never! You never have been like other women,—you've always been different from other women; you always will be."
"Have I? Shall I? Well, perhaps it's so. I'm rather glad of it. Most women are stupid, I think. Poor things!" she sighed.
He followed her as she moved towards the door, half-vexed, half-laughing:
"And men, Alva, and men. Are they all stupid in your eyes?"
She had her hand on the knob, and her great cape was gathered about her in heavy folds.
"Oh, Ronald," she said, looking into his look, "if you had any idea how fearfully stupid they seem to me. Often and often in the last three years. Even yourself. And ten years ago, when we were eighteen and twenty-five, I thought you so interesting, too."
He burst out laughing at that,—it wasn't in him to take her seriously enough to really mind her "ways" long.
"But what are we to do, when we are such mere ordinary creatures? And you know, my dear, that if the transcendentals like to muse on bridges by moonlight, some well-educated, commonplace individuals must build them the bridges first."