“Yes!” she said, looking him steadfastly in the face, and smiling. “That common, worthless little cad. Don’t begin to rave at me. You can’t stop me. Mother’s been trying for weeks.”
“I’m not going to ‘rave,’ young woman. I have more effective means than that to put a stop to your nonsense. You’re not so independent as you imagine—”
“If you’ll just take it for granted that I’m going to do it, we can talk,” said Andrée. “Otherwise it’s no use, and I’d better go.”
“I see your mother’s hand in this!” he said. “Some of her—peculiar ideas—”
“No, you don’t. She doesn’t even know I’m going to tell you. She’s done all she could to persuade me—”
“Persuade isn’t the word I’d use. Look here, Andrée, my girl, I’m not going to argue with you. Put this idea out of your head once and for all—”
“Why?”
“Why? Because I tell you to. You’re too young to know what you’re doing, and you’ll have to listen to people who are older and know better.”
“But—about this—you don’t know better. You don’t know anything about him. And anyway, it’s not a question of knowing, it’s a question of—of feeling. I—like him. I’m older than Mother was when she married you. I know what I’m doing. His only crime is being—what you call ‘common.’ He’s very remarkable. If you knew him, you’d soon see it.”
“You don’t know enough of the world to realize that marriages between people of unequal social position are always unhappy.”