“I am never in a fury.”
“Angry, then, or displeased.”
“I am never angry, and it is so long since I have been displeased that I have quite forgotten it.”
“I don’t believe,” said Mrs. Tristram, “that you are never angry. A man ought to be angry sometimes, and you are neither good enough nor bad enough always to keep your temper.”
“I lose it perhaps once in five years.”
“The time is coming round, then,” said his hostess. “Before I have known you six months I shall see you in a fine fury.”
“Do you mean to put me into one?”
“I should not be sorry. You take things too coolly. It exasperates me. And then you are too happy. You have what must be the most agreeable thing in the world, the consciousness of having bought your pleasure beforehand and paid for it. You have not a day of reckoning staring you in the face. Your reckonings are over.”
“Well, I suppose I am happy,” said Newman, meditatively.
“You have been odiously successful.”