Clement. Reproaching you? There can't be any question of that. But it has always been and still is incomprehensible to me how you got in with those people.
Margaret. You talk exactly as if they had been a gang of criminals!
Clement. Child, I give you my word, there were some of them that looked exactly like highway-robbers. What I can't understand is how you, with your well-developed sense of ... Well, I won't say anything more than your taste for ... cleanliness and nice perfumes ... could bear living among those people, sitting down at the table with them.
Margaret (smiling). Didn't you do it too?
Clement. I sat down near them—not with them. And you know it was for your sake, exclusively for your sake, that I did it. I won't deny that some of them improved on closer acquaintance; there were some really interesting people among them. And you mustn't get the idea, darling, that when I'm among ill-dressed people I have a feeling of conscious superiority. It's not that—but there's something in their whole bearing, in their very nature, that makes one nervous.
Margaret. Oh, I think that's rather a sweeping statement.
Clement. Now don't get offended with me, darling. I've just said there were some very interesting people among them. But how a lady can feel at home with them for any length of time, I shall never be able to understand.
Margaret. You forget one thing, my dear Clement—that in a certain sense I belong to their circle, or did belong to it.
Clement. You—I beg your pardon!
Margaret. They were artists.