“So long as she is vain and not conceited it does not matter.”
“The difference?”
“Well, vanity is a determination to make the best of our superiorities whilst frankly admitting them; conceit is a morbid desire to enforce the fact on other people.”
“Subtle,” murmured Grahame, who never spoke above his middle tones, “but I am not convinced. Sibella thinks a great deal too much of herself.”
“It is better than thinking too little of one’s self,” said Sibella, blowing rings of smoke and pursing up her lips deliciously, till I could have cried out on her for heartlessness.
“Very much better,” I assented. “People who think too little of themselves generally end by a mock humility which is a form of conceit infinitely tedious. No, believe me, the vanity you decry has in it something of virtue.”
Grahame turned to Sibella.
“Haven’t you noticed, Sibella, how much older Israel has grown of late?”
“Not in looks,” cried Sibella. “To-night he looks like a boy.”
This idea pleased me. The author of the secret that lay in young Gascoyne’s grave looking almost a boy savoured of the incongruous, for which I had developed an appetite.