She could only shake her head.
"There is the order," he went on, giving her a paper—"get him these things at once, and tell him I will come as soon as I am disengaged."
When they were alone again, Ideala looked at Lorrimer and laughed. "Another instance, I shrewdly suspect, of the difference between theory and practice," she observed.
He brushed his hand back over his forehead and hair, a trifle disconcerted. "He was the only son of his mother, and she was a widow," he said.
"And one can approve of capital punishment without having the nerve to see it inflicted, I suppose," Ideala commented, "and be convinced that it would be good for the human race to have a certain number of their children drowned, like kittens, every year, and yet not be able to see a single one disposed of in that way without risking one's own life to save it. Verily, I have heard this often, and yet I think I am more surprised to find it true than if I had never been warned! But that is always the way. Things surprise us just as much as we expect them to. When we went up the river to Canton and saw the Pagoda, we all exclaimed, 'Why, it is just like the pictures—river, and junks, and all!' If we had not seen the pictures I believe we should scarcely have noticed it, and certainly we should not have been surprised at all."
"Haven't you done being surprised yet?" Lorrimer asked.
"No. Have you?"
"Quite. Nothing ever surprises me."
"I have read somewhere," she said, trying hard to recall the passage, "that fast men, stupid men (I think), and rascals, profess to feel no surprise at anything."
The colour flew over his face, he seemed about to speak, but took up his pen again as if the thing were not worth the trouble of a word, and went on with his work. The habit of treating men as ideas is not to be got rid of in a moment, and it was only when she thought it over at dinner this evening that she saw anything to hurt him in what she had said. Now that she did think of it, however, it certainly seemed natural that he should object to being classed in any category which included fast men, stupid men, or rascals; but even while she blamed herself, and credited him with much forbearance in that he had allowed her rudeness to pass unpunished, she was conscious of the existence, in that substratum of thought which goes on continually irrespective of our will, of a doubt as to whether he might not after all be one of these—say, a fast man. For what did she know about him? Nothing, except that his manners were agreeable. True, she had heard of his good deeds, and there is never smoke without fire; but a man may balance his accounts, and many men do, in that way, topping up the scale of good deeds pretty high when the bad ones on the other side threaten to turn it; and, seeing that she knew nothing definitely about his private character, suppose she had been deceived in him? But, no! The thing was impossible. And just as she thought it, a gentleman, sitting opposite, one whom she had not met before, looked across the table and asked her if she knew Mr. Lorrimer.