The moment they were seated he said, “Miss Castleman, you must explain to me what you mean.”
“I knew I’d have to explain,” she responded. “I’ve been thinking how I could make you understand. You see, I’m a comparative stranger to this world of yours, and things might shock me which would seem to you quite a matter of course. I suppose I’m what you’d call a country girl, and have a provincial outlook.”
“Please go on,” he said.
“Well, Mr. van Tuiver, you have an enormous amount of money. Twenty or thirty million dollars—forty or fifty million dollars—the authorities don’t seem to agree about it. As well as I can put the matter, you have so much that it has displaced you; it isn’t you who think, it isn’t you who speak—it’s your money. You seem to be a sort of quivering, uneasy consciousness of uncounted millions of dollars; and the only thing that comes back to you from your surroundings is an echo of that quivering consciousness.”
“Do I really seem like that to you?”
“It’s the impression you’ve made upon everyone who knows you.”
“Oh, surely not!” he cried.
“Quite literally that,” said Sylvia. “I hated you before I ever laid eyes on you—because of the way you’d impressed your friends.”
There was a pause; when van Tuiver spoke again it was in a low and uncertain voice. “Miss Castleman,” he said, “has it ever occurred to you to think what might be the difficulties of my situation?”
“No, I haven’t had time for that.”