"I ain't sayin' he's not a quiet, pleasant-spoken enough gentleman, as free with his money as if he was a Christian—Most too free, if you ast me! What's he want out of it all? After all, a Jew's a Jew."
"Even if he happens to be a Unitarian?" (Nikolai, during his college life, had chanced to adopt that creed.)
"More 'n ever then," muttered Ellen darkly, "because his Jewness is all bottled up in him, ready to burst out on you unexpected, like a Jack-in-the-Box—You needn't laugh, Joie—you kin see it all in that eye of his. The rest of him don't look so Jewy, but if ever I see a Sheenier eye—! I don't hold with an eye that shows all it feels that way, myself. Seems sort of shameless."
"Indecent exposure of the eye," murmured Joan, "does not confine itself to the Semitic race, Nellen. It seems common to all people who do a good deal of thinking. One can't seem to mask the eye. The more that goes on behind it, the more it reflects—As witness my own," she added complacently.
Her next warning came from a higher quarter. Happening to encounter Mrs. Carmichael in the shops one day, that lady invited her to drive home in her carriage, where she proceeded to catechise her with tongue and lorgnon.
"You are looking very charming, dear child—one wonders at not seeing you about more? I hear your interesting friend is still in town, however. Perhaps it is he who absorbs so much of your time."
Joan admitted the imputation.
"Oh, really? Your husband is very complaisant!—Still, Mr. Blair would naturally be democratic in his point of view."
"Democratic? I think I don't understand."
The older lady shrugged; an Anglo-Saxon shrug, portentous in effect. "Oh, these writing-people—it's so difficult to tell who they are, isn't it? But Emily tells me you've always been singularly courageous."