“I thought you did.... But to tell you the truth, I never know, with people like you, how much is real, and how much is politeness. I’m not polite; I’m not used to politeness.”
“No one else ever thought that Edna and I were very polite,” she observed, laughing.
“But I can’t make you out!” he cried. “I never realized what a difference there was.... You’re a mystery to me.”
“Don’t think like that,” said Andrée, rather sharply. “What I admired so much about you was your way of looking at everyone as simply human.”
They had turned down the road in the direction of the big hotel; in the dusk he could see her face, and never had anything seemed to him less simply human. She looked to him so wonderful, so strange, so troubling; all his ideas about the frank and sensible companionship that ought to exist between man and woman were dissolving in her spell. Never had he felt less companionable—or less human. He was exalted and very unhappy. Humility was not one of his virtues; he had an honest consciousness of his own worth, and he did not feel humble now, but he was frightened. He knew very well that he was in love with her, and in a silly, unreasonable way, too. He saw no justification for adoring a woman, but he adored this one.
“Well ...” he said. “Why do you like me, anyway?”
“Because you’re real,” answered Andrée, promptly. “And honest. And specially because you haven’t any limits.”
“Oh—outside the pale!” he cried, very much hurt.
Andrée was surprised.
“Why do you always think things like that?” she asked. “You seem to think that matters so much—that—that artificial difference. It doesn’t to me.”