He became shy. He was ashamed of his sudden interest, which had been so long in coming, and instinctively hid it. He was committed to the rôle of a reasonable man.
“I am very flattered at your thinking of me in that way. I am afraid I do not deserve⸺”
“I want you to deserve, though. You are absurd about women. You are like a schoolboy!”
“Oh, you’ve noticed that?”
“It doesn’t require much⸺”
She lay staring at him in a serious way. Squashed up as she was lying, a very respectable bulk of hip filled the space between the two arms of the chair, not enough to completely satisfy a Dago, but too’ much to please a dandy of the west. He compared this opulence with Bertha’s and admitted that it outdid his fiancée’s. He did this childish measuring in the belief that he was not observed.
“You are extremely recalcitrant to intelligence, aren’t you?” she said.
“In women, you mean?”
“Yes.”