“My dear fellow,” said Ratcliffe, before he could continue, “I know absolutely and exactly how you feel on the subject and what you would say. I’ve felt it myself and said it to myself.
“I began to get fond of her almost from the first. If you’d been in my shoes, you would have been just the same. No one could help getting fond of her. Then after awhile I found how I was drifting, and I said to myself, ‘It’s absurd!’ I pictured all my female relations and so forth and my position in the wonderful thing you call Society.”
“Don’t sneer at Society,” said Skelton gravely. “That’s the easiest sort of cant that ever folly put into a man’s mouth. Go on.”
“You’re right,” said Ratcliffe. “All the same Society galls one at times when the thought of it comes up against something alive and fresh and free from snobbery like Jude. Well, things went on and on. I hadn’t much time for thinking, underhanded as we were; and that was the fatal thing, for I absorbed her without thinking,—not her face or body, but her character. You know that, underhanded and close together on a tub like the Sarah, character is the thing that shows and counts, and at every hand’s turn hers showed up and got a tighter grip on me. It wasn’t a character all jam, either, but it was a thing to count on and real as the sea—you can’t understand.”
“I can,” said Skelton, humoring the other, “a fine character.”
“Oh, Lord, no!” said Ratcliffe. “Don’t get away with things. Real, that’s the word!”
“But, my dear man—”
“I know what you are going to say. She can’t speak King’s English—well, I’m going to teach her. She’s dressed like that—well, I’m going to dress her properly after awhile.”
Skelton suddenly showed a flash of irritation.
“Come up to the point,” said he. “Are you, after what I’ve said, still fixed in your purpose? Are you going to marry her?”