"That I do not believe," he said emphatically.
She looked at him with interest.
"I suppose you really don't. I suppose you are quite unconscious of being a moral Antiseptic?"
"A what?" he asked with pretended horror. "It doesn't sound very nice."
"Doesn't it? I should think it must be rather nice to make the world sweeter, sounder, wholesomer, simply by being one's self."
"Miss Maclean—you are very kind!"
"I wish I could say the same of you! I call it most unkind to make that conventional remark in response to a simple and candid statement of a fact."
"It was not conventional. I meant it. It is most kind of a man's friends to give expression now and then to the good things they think about him. One almost wonders why they do it so seldom. The world is ready enough to give him the other side of the question. The truth is—I was thinking how very difficult it would be to formulate a definition of you."
Mona put her fingers in her ears with unaffected alarm.
"Oh, please don't," she said. "That would be a mean revenge indeed. It is one thing to say frankly the thought that is in our mind, and quite another to go afield in search of our opinion of a friend. There is a crude brutality about the latter process."