"Yes," said Felix, seating himself sideways in a chair not far off her, and leaning over the back to look at her with his large, clear, gray eyes, "and my text is something you said the other day. You said you didn't mind about people having right opinions so that they had good taste. Now I want you to see what shallow stuff that is."
"Oh, I don't doubt it if you say so. I know you are a person of right opinions."
"But by opinions you mean men's thoughts about great subjects, and by taste you mean their thoughts about small ones: dress, behavior, amusements, ornaments."
"Well—yes—or rather, their sensibilities about those things."
"It comes to the same thing; thoughts, opinions, knowledge, are only a sensibility to facts and ideas. If I understand a geometrical problem, it is because I have a sensibility to the way in which lines and figures are related to each other; and I want you to see that the creature who has the sensibilities that you call taste, and not the sensibilities that you call opinions, is simply a lower, pettier sort of thing—an insect that notices the shaking of the table, but never notices the thunder."
"Very well, I am an insect; yet I notice that you are thundering at me."
"No, you are not an insect. That is what exasperates me at your making a boast of littleness. You have enough understanding to make it wicked that you should add one more to the women who hinder men's lives from having any nobleness in them."
Esther colored deeply: she resented this speech, yet she disliked it less than many Felix had addressed to her.
"What is my horrible guilt?" she said, rising and standing, as she was wont, with one foot on the fender, and looking at the fire. If it had been any one but Felix who was near her, it might have occurred to her that this attitude showed her to advantage; but she had only a mortified sense that he was quite indifferent to what others praised her for.
"Why do you read this mawkish stuff on a Sunday, for example?" he said, snatching up "Réné," and running his eye over the pages.