“I knew it,” she said, “but I didn’t think it worth talking about. Do you know Mr. Raybold’s sister? Do you like her?”
“I have met her,” said Clyde; “but she is too lofty for me.”
“What is there lofty about her?” said Margery.
“Well,” said he, “she is lofty because she has elevated ideas. She goes in for reform; and for pretty much all kinds, from what I have heard.”
“I think she is lofty,” remarked Margery, “because she is stuck-up. I don’t like her.”
“It is so seldom,” Corona now continued, “that we find people who are willing to assert their individuality, and when they are found I always want to talk to them. I suppose, Mr. Matlack, that your life is one long assertion of individuality?”
“What, ma’am?” asked the guide.
“I mean,” said she, “that when you are out alone in the wild forest, holding in your hand the weapon which decides the question of life or death for any living creature over whom you may choose to exercise your jurisdiction, absolutely independent of every social trammel, every bond of conventionalism, you must feel that you are a predominant whole and not a mere integral part.”
“Well,” said Matlack, speaking slowly, “I may have had them feelin’s, but if I did they must have struck in, and not come out on the skin, like measles, where I could see ’em.”
“Corona,” said her brother, in a peevish undertone, “what is the good of all that? You’re wasting your words on such a man.”