He looked at her; she was quite in earnest.
"I suppose it to be different," he answered. "You must remember how little you have told me."
"I thought I told you a good deal! However, the atmosphere of a reception is no place for such subjects, and I can understand that you did not take it in. That is the reason I asked you to come and see me here. Shall I begin at once? It seems rather abrupt."
"I enjoy abruptness; I have not heard any for a long time."
"That I can understand, too; I suppose the society here is all finished off—there are no rough ends."
"There are ends. If not rough, they are often sharp."
But Miss Macks did not stop to analyze this; she was too much occupied with her own subject.
"I will begin immediately, then," she said. "It will be rather long; but if you are to understand me you ought, of course, to know the whole."
"My chair is very comfortable," replied Noel, placing his hat and gloves on the sofa near him, and taking an easy position with his head back.
Miss Macks thought that he ought to have said, "The longer it is, the more interesting," or something of that sort. She had already described him to her mother as "not over-polite. Not rude in the least, you know—as far as possible from that; wonderfully smooth-spoken; but yet, somehow—awfully indifferent." However, he was Raymond Noel; and that, not his politeness or impoliteness, was her point.