CONFIDENCE
"You seem to insinuate that I had nothing to renounce. I gave up—I gave up—" and she looked about her, considering a little—"I gave up society."
"I am glad you remember what it was," said Bernard. "If I have seemed uncivil, let me make it up. When a woman speaks of giving up society, what she means is giving up admiration. You can never have given up that—you can never have escaped from it. You must have found it even at Sorrento."
"It may have been there, but I never found it. It was very respectful—it never expressed itself."
"That is the deepest kind," said Bernard.
"I prefer the shallower varieties," the young girl answered.
"Well," said Bernard, "you must remember that although shallow admiration expresses itself, all the admiration that expresses itself is not shallow."
Miss Vivian hesitated a moment.
"Some of it is impertinent," she said, looking straight at him, rather gravely.
Bernard hesitated about as long.
"When it is impertinent it is shallow. That comes to the same thing."
The young girl frowned a little.
"I am not sure that I understand—I am rather stupid. But you see how right I am in my taste for such places as this. I have to come here to hear such ingenious remarks."
"You should add that my coming, as well, has something to do with it."
"Everything!" said Miss Vivian.
"Everything? Does no one else make ingenious remarks? Doesn't my friend Wright?"
"Mr. Wright says excellent things, but I should not exactly call them ingenious remarks."
45
