"It must be only by contrast, then, that I make you think of her," mused the girl. "We are absolute opposites."
"In detail, yes; in essentials, no," protested the man who was old enough to compliment boldly and directly. "You share the quality of goodness, but in itself that's as requisite to character and as externally uninteresting as bones in a body. You share a rarer gift, too. It's not so essential, but it crowns and enthrones its possessor and is life's rarest gift: pure charm. Relative charm we find now and again, but sheer, unalloyed charm is a flower that blooms only under the blue moon of magic."
The pinkness of Anne's cheeks grew deeper.
"Where is she now, sir?"
"For many years she has been where magic is the common law: in Paradise."
"Oh, forgive me. You spoke of her—"
"In the present tense," interrupted the soldier. "Yes, I always do. It is so that I think of her." He broke off, then went on in a changed voice, "But the gravity in eyes that laugh by divine right calls for explanation."
For an instant a tiny line of trouble showed between her brows, and the seriousness returned.
"I think perhaps, Mr. McCalloway, you are the one person I can tell." She paused as though trying to marshal the sequences of a difficult subject, then spoke impulsively:
"Boone doesn't realize it," she said slowly. "I don't want him to know, because there's nothing he can do about it—yet. Since I made my début—and that was almost three years ago—I've been under a pressure that's never relaxed. It hasn't been the sort of coercion one can openly fight, but the harder, more insidious thing. It's in mother's eyes—in everything—the unspoken accusation that I'm an ingrate: that I'm selfishly thinking only of myself and not at all of my family."