Marlowe refused hock with a bitter intensity which nearly startled the old retainer, who had just offered it to him, into dropping the decanter.
“How many English young men have you met?”
Billie met his eye squarely and steadily. “Well, now that I come to think of it, not many. In fact, very few. As a matter of fact, only....”
“Only?”
“Well, very few,” said Billie. “Yes,” she said meditatively, “I suppose I really have been rather unjust. I should not have condemned a class simply because ... I mean, I suppose there are young Englishmen who are not rude and ridiculous?”
“I suppose there are American girls who have hearts.”
“Oh, plenty.”
“I’ll believe that when I meet one.”
Sam paused. Cold aloofness was all very well, but this conversation was developing into a vulgar brawl. The ghosts of dead and gone Marlowes, all noted for their courtesy to the sex, seemed to stand beside his chair, eyeing him reprovingly. His work, they seemed to whisper, was becoming raw. It was time to jerk the interchange of thought back into the realm of distant civility.
“Are you making a long stay in London, Miss Bennett?”