"My mother would certainly like me to back out—I mean, not to go on."
"Pray do back out."
"I believe you want to take up with that detestable cad—the man you call Dick—loathsome worm!"
"You are doing your very best to be pleasant this evening, and to ingratiate yourself! All the world are cads, are they not? except a small class. But it is quite true. Dick wants me to marry him."
"You'd better, then, and go off on the tramp with him."
"Perhaps I shall. But now, Humphrey, just to come back to ourselves. You continually insult my people—the class to which I belong—whenever you open your lips to speak. You have nothing but contempt for the people who work for their living, to whom I belong, and the people outside your own little circle. What do you want to marry me for? To make me happy by having to listen to this continual flood of contempt?"
"Because, Molly"—the young man's artificial smile vanished and his pince-nez dropped—"because you are unlike everybody I know. None of the girls that I know are in the least like you. It pleases me to see you get indignant in defence of cads. It is like coming into a different atmosphere. I like to feel like coming down into another class. When we are married, I mean to go on living with my mother and her set, and to keep you apart—don't call it concealment—in some cottage away from the West End."
"And my own people?"
"Well, of course you won't have them to your house, I suppose. You can go and see some of them, if you like. You can't possibly want to see all——"