“Yes, I confess to feeling very sorry for you.”
“Did I not know as much? From the very first you pitied me. Pity, pity! What an intolerable burden it is! I have bent under it all my life.”
“My dear Viva, what nonsense you talk! Because I had mistaken ideas about you that first night, when we were strangers—”
“You were not mistaken. I was soured. I had been disappointed. My thoughts were bitter as gall. I had no patience with other girls who had so many blessings that I had never known. I saw them making light of their advantages, peevish, ill-tempered, self-indulgent; and I scorned them. Contempt for others was the only comfort of my barren life. And so my vinegar tongue disgusted you, did it not?”
“I was not disgusted—concerned and interested, rather. Your conversation was original. I wanted to know more of you.”
“Did you think me pretty?”
“I was more impressed by your mental gifts than your physical—”
“That is only a polite way of saying you thought me plain.”
“Viva, you know better than that. If I thought of your appearance at all during that first meeting, be assured I thought you interesting—yes, and pretty. Only prettiness is a poor word to express a face that is full of intellect and originality.”
“You thought me pale, faded, haggard, old for my age,” she said decisively. “Don’t deny it. You must have seen what my glass had been telling me for the last year.”