“You assure me she is respectable. How can she receive presents from a man, how can her mother allow her to receive presents, unless she means something?”
“Perfectly well,” laughed the Younger irritatingly.
“And is that another, may I ask, of your famous inventions?” put the Elder with some irony.
“It is perhaps the most famous of all,” replied the younger, without a qualm. “We are a philosophic people. We take what comes, whether it be diamonds or bankruptcy.”
“Yes, but young girls!” burst out the Elder. “Can they take diamonds and keep their characters?”
“Perfectly well! What have diamonds to do with character? The young girls do not attach the exaggerated importance to material things which you do here. They receive necklaces, tiaras, stomachers, as the merest natural tribute to their charms, and as simply as they would receive wild flowers. It means nothing.”
The Elder gasped.
“And would they be capable of refusing one after that?”
“Perfectly.”
“Madre di Dio! What a society! What taste! What——” He could say no more. But even in the rapids he felt that the Younger was the only one to pilot him ashore. “Do you positively mean to tell me, then, that I am nowhere?”