For some moments the girl stands looking vaguely out at the rhododendron belts and azalea beds, the lawns and parterres, with a horrible feeling of hatred and physical nausea towards the man with whom she is to pass her life. Then the horror is transferred to herself, and strong reaction follows. She thrusts the letter into her pocket, goes back to her former seat, and picks up the book. Her action seems to forbid question or intrusion. But in a moment or two she lays down the volume, and makes her expiation. It does not look like one at first.
“Do not you think that complete unselfishness is the highest as well as the rarest quality that a man can possess?”
He is so much taken aback by the triteness and apparent irrelevance of the question, that she is able to enlarge uninterrupted upon her dog’s-eared theme.
“I mean do not you think that it is to be set far above generosity, or endurance, or courage, or any of that sort of showy virtues?”
“Are they showy?”
“They get a great deal more kudos, at any rate!” she retorts, with a heat he does not understand. “Do not you agree with me?”
“I do not think I ever thought about it,” he answers bluntly. “If I had, I should have taken for granted that unselfishness included all the others.”
“How?”
“Well, take pluck for instance. If a man were perfectly unselfish, he would never cast a thought to his own skin.”
“I do not at all agree with you,” rejoins she, almost rudely. “There is no relation whatever between them: the one is the loftiest of moral qualities; the other is purely physical, a mere matter of nerves and muscles, and beef and beer.”