"What a powerful thing the Slav microbe is; more powerful even than the Irish microbe. Her French common sense and her Latin logic had been stricken by that curious Russian intellectual malaria. She will never get it out of her system."
I asked him if he thought Kranitski had the same malaria.
"It is less noticeable in him," Rudd said, "because he is Russian; there is no contrast to observe, no conflict. He is simply a Slav of a rather conventional type. His Slavness would simply reveal itself in his habits; his incessant cigarette-smoking; his good head for cards—he was an admirable card-player—his facility for playing the piano, and perhaps singing folk-songs—I don't know if he does, but he well might; his good-natured laziness; his social facility; his quick superficiality. There is nothing interesting psychologically there."
I said that I believed his mother was Italian.
Rudd said this was impossible. She might be Polish, but there was evidently no southern strain in him. Although I knew for a fact that Rudd was wrong, I could not contradict him; greatly as I wished to do so I could not bring the words across my lips.
I said he had made Mrs. Lennox's acquaintance.
He said he knew that he had met him in their rooms.
I asked whether he thought Miss Brandon liked him.
Rudd said that Miss Brandon was the same towards everyone. Profoundly indifferent, that is to say. He did not think, he was, in fact, quite certain that there was not a soul at Haréville who raised a ripple of interest on the perfectly level surface of her resigned discontent.
Then we went out into the park and listened to the music.