"Are you interested in questions of millinery?"
"In questions of millinery!"
"Or do you take a wider range, and take a living interest in the burning questions of the progress of revolution and the advance of man?"
Mr. Ely felt clear in his own mind that the lady was chaffing him, but he did not quite see his way to tell her so.
"I'm fond of common sense."
"Ah, but common sense is a term which conveys such different meanings. I suppose, that, in its strictest definition, common sense is the highest, rarest sense of all. I suppose that you use the term in a different way."
This was exasperating. Mr. Ely felt it was.
"I suppose you mean that I'm a fool."
"There again--who shall define folly? The noblest spirits of them all have been by the world called fools."
Miss Truscott gazed before her with a rapt intensity of vision, as though she saw the noble spirits referred to standing in the glow of the western sky.