"(It's all right—he won't come in again). But why did they pretend not to be married?" Dorothy asked in amazement.
"I don't know—I mean I forget for the moment—it seemed perfectly clear the way Walter explained it—you ought to go and hear him——"
"But what difference could being married—I mean not being married—make?"
"Ah!" said Katie, with satisfaction at having found her bearings again. "Walter's got a whole Lecture on that. It always thrills everybody. Amory thinks it's almost his best—after the 'Synthetic Protoplasm' one, of course—that's admitted by everybody to be quite the best!"[1]
"Proto ... but I thought those were a kind of oats!" said poor Dorothy, utterly bewildered.
"Oats!" cried Katie in a sort of whispered shriek. "Why, it's—it's—but I don't know even how to begin to explain it! Do you mean to say you haven't read about these things?"
"No," murmured Dorothy, abashed.
"Not Monod, nor Ellen Key, nor Sebastien Faure, nor Malom!——"
"N-o." Dorothy felt horribly ashamed of herself.