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 more. He'll never know. He doesn't, Mr. Livingstone—often he doesn't know."

"Not much, that's a fact," agreed Neale, reflecting that he did not seem to either.

She asked him suddenly, "But really why didn't you accept?"

"Do you want to know?" he asked warningly.

"Yes, I really wonder."

"Simplest reason in the world. I didn't like Donna Antonia Pierleoni very well. She seemed to me like a bad-tempered, stupid old lady, mightily full of her own importance. Why under the sun should I go and have tea with such a person?"

"Eh bien …!" she breathed out a long, soft ejaculation of surprise, looking at him very queerly.

"You're thinking I'm very rude to say such a thing about a friend of yours," he said, hanging his head.

"I'm thinking no such thing at all," she contradicted him. "I don't believe you could imagine what I'm thinking."

"You never said a truer thing," Neale admitted ruefully.

"Well, I'll tell you," she said, "though it couldn't be interesting to anybody but me. I was thinking that I had never heard anybody before who spoke the truth right out about somebody who had wealth and position."

"You mustn't blame me for it!" Neale excused himself. "I'm a regular outsider on all that sort of thing—you remember the Sioux Indian in the eighteenth century who was taken to see the court at Versailles? How he strolled around in his blanket and couldn't make out what all the bowing and scraping was about? Well, he and I are about on a level of blank ignorance of social distinctions."

"But you don't wish to know," the girl divined, "you don't care if you are an outsider. Why, I believe," she said with a little burst of astonishment, "I believe you'd rather be an outsider."

He looked apologetic. "That's part of my dumbness, don't you see? I just can't conceive why anybody should bother his head about it. I tell you," he hit on the right phrase of explanation, "I just don't know any better."

"Would you learn?" she pressed him more closely.