"I predicted you would."
"Well, I am.... It isn't false pride; I don't care what they think about me. If I chose to be a waiter in a Broadway café, their opinion wouldn't concern me.... I'm simply weary of the place, the majority of the people—what they think and do, their private life, their mere coming in and going out.... It isn't the pitiable absurdity of their offensive environment alone, the horror of the architecture, the gilded entrails of their abode—it's the whole bally combination! ... I'm sick—sick! And that's the truth, Diana."
"I think," she said, smiling, "that you are also a little bit bored with us."
He looked up at her, perplexed, already beginning to be very much ashamed of his outburst, already conscious of a painful reaction from his unrestraint.
"Diana," he said impulsively, "I'm just a plain brute, and rather a vulgar one; but, do you know, there isn't anybody else in the world I'd have permitted to hear that outburst—whether you take it as a compliment or not."
"You mean you don't care what I think of you?"
He thought for a moment. "I can't mean that, of course."
"You might, very easily."
"I couldn't; I do care what you think of me. Probably what I meant was that I—dare say things to you; that I've a sort of instinct that I can come to you in an emergency——"
"In other words, that I'll stand anything from you?" she said, smiling. "I don't know about that, my friend."