"I did not say she was a gentleman," retorted Kindelon, "though her general deportment has more than once cast a doubt upon her sex."
Mr. Barrowe gave a faint shiver. "I'm glad I haven't it on my conscience," he declared, "that I injured an honest girl to gratify a mere spite." He at once turned to Pauline, now. "Madam," he pursued, "I must warn you that your project will prove a dire failure if you attempt to develop it on a system of despotic preferences. We were all glad to come to you, in a liberal, democratic, intellectual spirit. But the very moment you undertake the establishment of a society formed on a basis of capricious likes and dislikes, I assure you that you are building on sand and that your structure will fall."
"In that case, Mr. Barrowe," said Pauline, stung by his unwarranted officiousness into the employment of biting irony, "you can have no excuse if you allow yourself to be buried in my ruins."
She passed rapidly away, while Kindelon accompanied her. "You were quite right," came his speedy encouragement, as they moved onward together. "You showed that insufferable egotist the door in the politest and firmest manner possible."
"I was in my own house, though," said Pauline, with an intonation that betokened the dawn of repentance. "He was very exasperating, truly, but—I was in my own house, you know."
"Of course you were," exclaimed Kindelon, "and he treated you as if it belonged to somebody else. We are all apt to assert a proprietary right when a fellow-citizen ventures to relieve us of our purse, and I think a similar claim holds good with regard to our self-respect."
Pauline presently came to a standstill. She looked troubled, and her gaze remained downcast for a little while. But soon she lifted it and met Kindelon's eyes steadily watching her.
"You don't think I was unjustifiably rude?" she asked.
"No; indeed I do not. I don't think you were rude at all."
She was silent for a brief interval. Then she said, without taking her eyes in the least from her companion's face,—