'Do you think I can't understand?' she asked, in her impetuous way—her imperial way with most others, but only an impetuous way with him. For most others with whom she was familiar she was able to control and be familiar with, but she could only be impetuous with the Dictator. Indeed, it was the high tide of her emotion which carried her away so far as to fling her in mere impetuousness against him.
The Dictator was silent for a moment, and then he said: 'You don't seem much more than a child to me.'
'Oh! Why? Do you not know?—I am twenty-three!'
'I am twenty-three,' the Dictator murmured, looking at her with a kindly and half-melancholy interest. 'You are twenty-three! Well, there it is—do you not see, Miss Langley?'
'There what is?'
'There is all the difference. To be twenty-three seems to you to make you quite a grown-up person.'
'What else should it make me? I have been of age for two years. What am I but a grown-up person?'
'Not in my sense,' he said placidly. 'You see, I have gone through so much, and lived so many lives, that I begin to feel quite like an old man already. Why, I might have had a daughter as old as you.'
'Oh, stuff!' the audacious young woman interposed.
'Stuff? How do you know?'