“Because I am not of your class? not a gentleman?”
“Don’t talk nonsense,” I said. “There aren’t any gentlemen left. The species is extinct. The very name of it is vulgarised. You’re as near being one as anybody I know. And that has nothing to do with it. Gentleman or not, you’ve go to decide for yourself. No man living can do it for you.”
“Your class would decide for me if I belonged to it,” said Ascher. “The collective wisdom of your class, the class instinct. It would make me certain, leave me in no doubt at all, if only I belonged to it, were one of you. The choice I have to make——”
Ascher paused.
“It’s a nasty choice to have to make. You’ve got to be disloyal either way you go. That’s what it comes to.”
“There is no other way,” said Ascher sadly, “no third way.”
“Not that I can see.”
There was, in fact, a third way, though I did not see it at the time. Mrs. Ascher discovered it. I heard of it two days later.