"That is because you are so good—and so cold."
"Am I?"
"Yes, dear Miss Farringdon; and so amiable. You never do things in a temper."
"But I do; I really have got a temper of my own, though nowadays people seem to find difficulty in believing it. I have frequently done things in a temper before now; but as long as the temper lasts I am pleased that I have done them, and feel that I do well to be angry. When the temper is over, I sometimes think differently; but not till then. As I have told you before, my will is so strong that it and I are never at loggerheads with each other; it always rules me completely."
Farquhar sighed. "I wish I were as strong as you are; but I am not. And do you mean to tell me that there is no worldly side to you, either; no side that hankers after fleshpots, even while the artist within you is being fed with manna from heaven?"
"No; I don't think there is," Elisabeth replied slowly. "I really do not like people any the better for having money and titles and things like that, and it is no use pretending that I do."
"I do. I wish I didn't, but I can't help it. It is only you who can help me to look at life from the ideal point of view—you whose feet are still wet with the dew of Olympus, and in whom the Greek spirit is as fresh as it was three thousand years ago."
"Oh! I'm not as perfect as all that; far from it! I don't despise people for not having rank or wealth, since rank and wealth don't happen to be the things that interest me. But there are things that do interest me—genius and wit and culture and charm, for instance—and I am quite as hard on the people who lack these gifts, as ever you are on the impecunious nobodies. I confess I am often ashamed of myself when I realize how frightfully I look down upon stupid men and dull women, and how utterly indifferent I am as to what becomes of them. So I really am as great a snob as you are, though I wear my snobbery—like my rue—with a difference."
"Not a snob, dear lady—never a snob! There never existed a woman with less snobbery in her composition than you have. That you are impatient of the dull and unattractive, I admit; but so you ought to be—your own wit and charm give you the right to despise them."
"But they don't; that's where you make a mistake. It is as unjust to look down on a man for not making a joke as for not making a fortune. Though it isn't so much the people who don't make jokes that irritate me, as the people who make poor ones. Don't you know the sort?—would-be wits who quote a remark out of a bound Punch, and think they have been brilliant; and who tell an anecdote crusted with antiquity, which men learned at their mother's knees, and say that it actually happened to a friend of theirs the week before last."