"Perhaps one of them is, that, in our class, we make respectability more a question of the individual than you do in yours."
"That may be very true," returned Hesper. "So long as a man behaves himself, we ask no questions."
"Will you let me tell you how the thing looks to me?" said Mary.
"Certainly. You do not suppose I care for the opinions of the people about me! I, too, have my way of looking at things."
So said Hesper; yet it was just the opinions of the people about her that ruled all those of her actions that could be said to be ruled at all. No one boasts of freedom except the willing slave—the man so utterly a slave that he feels nothing irksome in his fetters. Yet, perhaps, but for the opinions of those about her, Hesper would have been worse than she was.
"Am I right, then, in thinking," began Mary, "that people of your class care only that a man should wear the look of a gentleman, and carry himself like one?—that, whether his appearance be a reality or a mask, you do not care, so long as no mask is removed in your company?—that he may be the lowest of men, but, so long as other people receive him, you will, too, counting him good enough?"
Hesper held her peace. She had by this time learned some facts concerning the man she had married which, beside Mary's question, were embarrassing.
"It is interesting," she said at length, "to know how the different classes in a country regard each other." But she spoke wearily: it was interesting in the abstract, not interesting to her.
"The way to try a man," said Mary, "would be to turn him the other way, as I saw the gentleman who is taking your portrait do yesterday trying a square—change his position quite, I mean, and mark how far he continued to look a true man. He would show something of his real self then, I think. Make a nobleman a shopkeeper, for instance, and see what kind of a shopkeeper he made. If he showed himself just as honorable when a shopkeeper as he had seemed when a nobleman, there would be good reason for counting him an honorable man."
"What odd fancies you have, Mary!" said Hesper, yawning.