"But you know nothing whatever about him. That's just the point."
"Ah, but I feel a lot," she said, with an expressive twist of her thin, rather pretty face. "He's bad, rank bad. That's what he is."
Julian was suddenly seized with a desire to probe this outrageous instinct to its source, believing, like many people, that the stream of instinct must flow from some hidden spring of reason.
"Now, look here," he said, more quietly. "I want you to try to tell me what it is in him that you dislike so much."
"It's everything, dearie."
"No; but that's absurd. For instance, it can't be his looks."
"It is."
"Why, he's wonderfully handsome."
"I don't care. I hate his face; yes, I do."
Julian impatiently pitied her as one pities a blind man who knocks up against one in the street. But he thought it best to abandon Valentine's appearance to its unhappy fate of her dislike, and sailed away on another tack.