Again the chance offered for him to make her forget Quisanté or remember him only by a disadvantageous comparison. His honest desire to save her combined again with bitter prejudice to lead him wrong.
"I can't believe it of you," he declared. "I can't have been so wrong about you as that."
"I see nothing to prevent you from having been absolutely wrong about me," she said coldly, "as wrong about me as you are about—other people."
"If you mean——"
"Oh, yes, let's be open with one another," she cried. "I mean Mr. Quisanté; you're utterly wrong and prejudiced about him."
"He's not even a gentleman."
"I suppose he goes to the wrong tailor!" said May scornfully.
He came a step nearer to her. "You know I don't mean that sort of thing, nor even other things that aren't vital to life though they're desirable in society. He hasn't the mind of a gentleman."
Now she wavered; she sat looking at him with troubled eyes, feeling he was right, desiring to be persuaded, struggling against the opposing force. But Marchmont went on fretfully, almost peevishly,
"The astonishing thing is that you're blind to that, that you don't see him as he really and truly is."