"What in the world do you mean?"
"I saw a girl who looked like you smoking a cigarette. She had the same coloured hair, and bore such a strong resemblance to you that my heart became as heavy as lead. A little later I saw the same girl, or someone very much like her, drinking a liqueur. Of course, it seemed quite the order of the day, and I ought not to be shocked, but had it been you I should have been very sad."
"Why, what is there so terrible in a cigarette or a liqueur?" asked Mary Bolitho.
"I don't know, I'm sure," he replied.
"You'd have taken no notice if a man smoked a cigarette or drank a liqueur. Is a woman different from a man?"
"She ought to be," said Paul. "At least, so it seems to me; but then, as I tell you, I am altogether out of place among that kind of people. I have all sorts of old-fashioned ideas about women. I know they are unpopular. They are thought to be bourgeois, and entertained only by the middle classes. But there you are—I am bourgeois; or perhaps I belong to a lower class even than that. I'm a working man."
"Can you find a chair for me somewhere?" asked the girl. "Of course I don't agree with you in the least, but it's rather interesting to hear you."
He found a chair for her and stood by her side. "I'm so glad it wasn't you."
"How do you know it wasn't I?" she asked.
"Because you're not that sort! You don't drink liqueurs. You don't smoke cigarettes!"