"They impress me," she said, returning his envelope; "but not as better than friends."
"Ah? A matter of taste. Now—"
"I had always supposed," continued the girl, looking at him, "that sociology had a close relation with life—in fact, that it was based on a conscious recognition of—the brotherhood of man."
"Your supposition is doubtless sound, though you express it so loosely."
"Yet you feel that the sociologist has no such relation?"
He glanced up sharply. At the subtly hostile look in her eyes, his expression became, for the first time, a little interested.
"How do you deduce that?"
"Oh!... It is loose, if you like—but I deduce it from what you have said—and implied—about your father and—having friends."
But what she thought of, most of all, was the case of Fifi.
She stood across the table, facing him, looking down at him; and there was a faintly heightened color in her cheeks. Her eyes were the clearest lapis lazuli, heavily fringed with lashes which were blacker than Egypt's night. Her chin was finely and strongly cut; almost a masculine chin, but unmasculinely softened by the sweetness of her mouth.