“Your conduct was, of course, above reproach; but you made for yourself a detestable reputation of mental superiority, expressed ironically. You inspired mistrust in the best people. You were never popular.”
“I was bored,” murmured Mrs. Travers in a reminiscent tone and with her chin resting in the hollow of her hand.
Mr. Travers got up from the seaman's chest as unexpectedly as if he had been stung by a wasp, but, of course, with a much slower and more solemn motion.
“The matter with you, Edith, is that at heart you are perfectly primitive.” Mrs. Travers stood up, too, with a supple, leisurely movement, and raising her hands to her hair turned half away with a pensive remark:
“Imperfectly civilized.”
“Imperfectly disciplined,” corrected Mr. Travers after a moment of dreary meditation.
She let her arms fall and turned her head.
“No, don't say that,” she protested with strange earnestness. “I am the most severely disciplined person in the world. I am tempted to say that my discipline has stopped at nothing short of killing myself. I suppose you can hardly understand what I mean.”
Mr. Travers made a slight grimace at the floor.
“I shall not try,” he said. “It sounds like something that a barbarian, hating the delicate complexities and the restraints of a nobler life, might have said. From you it strikes me as wilful bad taste. . . . I have often wondered at your tastes. You have always liked extreme opinions, exotic costumes, lawless characters, romantic personalities—like d'Alcacer . . .”