“You don’t?”
“I’ve seen too much of men. They’re divided into three classes: beasts, fools, and intellectuals. You belong to the last and have a great gift besides. You’ve got something better to do than being an abject slave of the race—for that is what it amounts to—and your emotions are all in your head.”
“And that represents your considered observation of intellectuals! Or are you the average American whose creed is: ‘Things are what I want them to be, not what they are’?”
“Of course not,” said Gita crossly. “I wouldn’t recognize the beastliness and stupidity of human nature and of life if I were. But you are as cold-blooded as a codfish and I shouldn’t like you if you were not.”
Bylant nearly strangled as he passed over the diagnosis. “Like? You said just now you loved me.”
“Love only means preference raised a degree higher. Stop arguing on such a silly subject, Eustace. What’s come over you? This is the first time we’ve argued that I haven’t learned something.”
“Well, I’ve taught you nothing on one subject, that’s flat. I merely wanted to sound you out on a topic of somewhat general preoccupation. Your ideas always interest me and you’ve been singularly illuminating this morning. Here’s a tearoom. Shall we go in and have a cup? It’s two hours until luncheon.”
CHAPTER XVII
Gita had an old habit of reviewing the day as she prepared herself for the night. She and Elsie parted at nine o’clock, for both rose early, and as Gita kicked off her slippers that evening she recalled her conversation with Eustace on the Boardwalk.
She had been by no means as obtuse as she had appeared, for love and marriage were subjects never broached by him before and her keen ear had detected a personal vibration in his even mellow voice. But he had talked lightly or brilliantly on strictly impersonal topics during the rest of the morning, they had lunched at the Pleydens’, and played tennis all afternoon; she had not given that conversation another thought until she was alone in her room.