"When he bends his head a little and looks down at you as you talk," she said, "he is very nice. He is really thinking of you and regarding you seriously. I do not think he is given to trifling."
"No," returned Bertha; "I do not think he is given to anything special but being massive. That is what you are thinking,—that he is massive."
"There is no denying," said her friend, "that that is one of the things I like."
"Ah!" said Bertha, "you find the rest of us very flippant and trivial. That is how we strike you!"
A fatigued little sigh escaped her lips.
"After all," she said, "it is true. And we have obliged ourselves to be trivial for so long that we are incapable of seriousness. Sometimes—generally toward Lent, after I have been out a great deal—I wonder if the other would not be interesting for a change; but, at the same time, I know I could not be serious if I tried."
"Your seriousness will be deeper," said Mrs. Sylvestre, "when you accomplish it without trying."
She was serious herself as she spoke, but her seriousness was extremely gentle. She looked at Bertha even tenderly, and her clear eyes were very expressive.
"We are both changed since we met here last," she said, with simple directness, "and it is only natural that what we have lived through should have affected us differently. We are of very different temperaments. You were always more vivid and intense than I, and suffering—if you had suffered"—