Page:Her Roman Lover (Frothingham, 1911).djvu/59

 women. But in my country women are under an obligation to be something else than charming.”

“What a strange race of women will grow up among you!”

“It is a different world, a different world,” she said half aloud, expressing her bewilderment at his point of view.

He did not answer, and seemed to await further expression of her perplexity. When it came it surprised him.

“We are ethical,” she said. “You are atavistic. Yes, in spite of your forms, your etiquettes, your elaboration of ceremonies, you are nearer atavism than we are!”

“Nearer atavism!” he murmured; “‘it is astounding!”

“Perhaps you do not understand the word in English,” she suggested.

“I understand it so perfectly that if I did not look at you I should think myself talking with a professor of sociology.”

He was stupefied to hear such a phrase from such lips. In what hardy, what barbarous atmosphere were young girls, then, educated in that strange country from which she came!

But he did not misunderstand her, as some men of his race and class would have done. Her face