"All this doesn't touch my point," said Claudia. "You are accounting for it as if it existed. My point was that it didn't exist. I said it was all affectation."
"And not the only sort of affectation of the same kind!" said Kate Bernard, with remarkable emphasis.
Sir Roderick enjoyed a troubled sea. Turning to Kate, with a rapid side glance at Claudia on the way, he said:
"That's interesting. How do you mean, Miss Bernard?"
"All attempts to put one's self forward, to be peculiar, and so on, are the same kind of affectation, and are odious—especially in women."
There was nothing very much in the words, and Kate was careful to look straight in front of her as she uttered them. Still they told.
"You mean," said Ayre, "there may be an affectation of freshness and enthusiasm—gush, in fact—as bad, or worse, than cynicism, and really springing from the same root?"
Kate had not arrived at any such definite meaning, but she nodded her head.
"An assumed sprightliness," continued Ayre cheerfully, "perhaps coquettishness?"
"Exactly," Kate assented, "and a way of pushing into conversations which my mother used to say girls had better let alone."