Levin said:
"You've got hold of yourself?"
Tietjens answered:
"Pretty well. . . . You'll excuse my having been emotional so far. You aren't English, so it won't have embarrassed you."
Levin exclaimed in an outraged manner:
"Hang it, I'm English to the backbone! What's the matter with me?"
Tietjens said:
"Nothing. . . . Nothing in the world. That's just what makes you un-English. We're all . . . well, it doesn't matter what's wrong with us. . . . What did you gather about my relations with Miss Wannop?"
The question was so unemotionally put and Levin was still so concerned as to his origins that he did not at first grasp what Tietjens had said. He began to protest that he had been educated at Winchester and Magdalen. Then he exclaimed, "Oh!" And took time for reflection.
"If," he said finally, "the general had not let out that she was young and attractive . . . at least, I suppose attractive . . . I should have thought that you regarded her as an old maid. . . . You know, of course, that it came to me as a shock, the thought that there was anyone. . . . That you had allowed yourself . . . Anyhow . . . I suppose I'm simple. . . ."