"Yes?" he inquired.
"Is it much trouble to you to be honest?"
He was a little surprised, though not so much as he would have been earlier in their acquaintance. "That," he said, "I expect rather depends on what you mean by honest. I imagine you don't refer to lying and stealing, and that sort of thing, since nobody finds it difficult to avoid them."
"They are not gentlemanly?" she suggested.
"I don't know that I ever looked at it in that way," he said; "or, indeed, any way. One does not think about those sort of things; one does not do them, that's all."
She nodded. The careless change of pronoun, which in a way included her with himself, was not lost upon her.
"In the matter of half-truths," she inquired; "how about them?"
"I don't think I have given that subject consideration either," he answered, rather amused; "there does not seem any need at my age. One does things, or one does not; abstractions don't appeal to most men after thirty."
Again Julia nodded. "It looks to me," she said, "as if you take your morality, like your dinner, as a matter of course; it's always there; you don't have to bother after it; you don't really know how it comes, or what it is worth."
Now and then Rawson-Clew had observed in his acquaintance with Julia, she said things which had a way of lighting him up to himself; this was one of the occasions. "Possibly you are right," he said, with faint amusement. "How do you take yours? Let us consider yours; I am sure it would be a great deal more interesting."