Effie had walked on softly, taking in everything with a mingled sense of admiration and ridicule. She was quite apart, a spectator, listening to the artificial talk about nothing at all, the conversation made up with a distinct idea of being brilliant and interesting, which yet was natural enough to these young people, themselves artificial, who made up their talk as they made up their life, out of nothing. Effie laughed within herself with involuntary criticism, yet was half impressed at the same time, feeling that it was like something out of a book.
“Oh, me?” she said in surprise at being consulted. “I have not any opinion, indeed. I never thought of it at all.”
“Then think now, and let us hear; for you should know best how the people here would like it.”
“Don’t you see, Dor, that she thinks us very silly, and would not talk such nonsense as we are talking for the world? There is no sense in it, and Effie is full of sense.”
“Miss Ogilvie has both sense and sympathy,” said Fred.
This discussion over her alarmed Effie. She grew red and pale; half affronted, half pleased, wholly shy and uncomfortable.
“No,” she said, “I couldn’t talk like you. I never talk except when—except when—I have got something to say; that is, of course, I mean something that is—something—not merely out of my head, like you. I am not clever enough for that.”
“Is she making fun of us, Phyll?”
“I think so, Dor. She is fact, and we are—well, what are we?—not fiction altogether, because we’re real enough in flesh and blood.”
Effie was moved to defend herself.