"'Wasn't a civil bow enough?"
Which remark aroused all that was dramatic and poetic in the boy, and he spoke with a slightly exaggerated phraseology:
"What is there common about this very beautiful girl? Surely not her features. Her head, her figure, her hands, her feet are delicate and very exquisitely formed; in her bearing there is an unconscious and sweet dignity; her voice is soft, charming, well-bred. What is there about her that you find common?"
His mother, irritated and secretly dismayed, maintained, however, her placid mask and her attitude of toleration.
She said: "I distinguish between a woman to the manner born, and a woman who is not. The difference is as subtle as intuition and as wide as the ocean. And, dear, no young man, however clever, is clever enough to instruct his mother concerning such matters."
"I was asking you to instruct me," he said.
"Very well. If you wish to know the difference between the imitation and the real, compare that young woman with Winifred Stuart."
Clive's gaze shifted from his mother and became fixed on space.