The utter hopelessness of the situation turned me flippant.
"Yes," said I, "I am a very dangerous, unprincipled man. I'm thoroughly and hopelessly bad, Thusis. What do you think about me now?"
"What I have always thought about your class,—nothing!" she said in an even, smiling voice.
"Class!" I repeated, perplexed by the word, and the faint contempt in her voice.
"Exactly. That is most accurately what I mean—your class in the social scale, Mr. O'Ryan. And you live—down to it."
"Will you explain," said I, amazed and angry, "what you mean to infer?"
"I don't infer. I am direct and implicit. You behave as might be expected. Quality demands certain things of itself. Of you, Mr. O'Ryan, nothing is demanded. And nothing involving quality is expected.... And I have been a great fool," she added quietly. And walked out the way she entered, leaving me perplexed and thoroughly enraged.
And I would not have it left in any such way; and sprang up and overtook Thusis as she entered the empty living-room.
"What I want to know," said I, "is what you mean by implying that any social inequality exists between you and me?"
"Between you and your servant?" she inquired mockingly. And tried to pass me.