Mrs. Bowen did not answer anything; she let the book lie in her lap.
"What an odd person Mr. Colville is!" said Imogene, after a moment. "Don't you think he's very different from other gentlemen?"
"Why?"
"Oh, he has such a peculiar way of talking."
"What peculiar way?"
"Oh, I don't know. Plenty of the young men I see talk cynically, and I do sometimes myself—desperately, don't you know. But then I know very well we don't mean anything by it."
"And do you think Mr. Colville does? Do you think he talks cynically?"
Imogene leaned back in her chair and reflected. "No," she returned slowly, "I can't say that he does. But he talks lightly, with a kind of touch and go that makes you feel that he has exhausted all feeling. He doesn't parade it at all. But you hear between the words, don't you know, just as you read between the lines in some kinds of poetry. Of course it's everything in knowing what he's been through. He's perfectly unaffected; and don't you think he's good?"
"Oh yes," sighed Mrs. Bowen. "In his way."
"But he sees through you. Oh, quite! Nothing escapes him, and pretty soon he lets out that he has seen through you, and then you feel so flat! Oh, it's perfectly intoxicating to be with him. I would give the world to talk as he does."