Page:The Plutocrat (1927).pdf/138

 some experience of the world," he explained. "What distresses us is to see foreigners getting their idea of America from the Tinkers; and what I meant by 'grotesque'—well, frankly, since you do permit me to say so, it seemed grotesque that you could be so gracious as to find the man amusing instead of awful."

"Why?"

"Why?" he repeated. "Why, because anyone can see at the first glance that you are at the most extreme opposite pole from such a creature. Because you are so preëminently everything that he is not, and he is so vulgarly everything that you are not."

"Ah, but he did not seem to me vulgar," she said. "I cannot understand. Why should you think I am so different?"

"What! Why, I've never seen anyone like you before in my life," he informed her earnestly. "When I came into that room yesterday afternoon and saw you sitting there"

He paused, and she looked at him inquiringly. "Yes? I was sitting—where? You mean when I played bridge in the afternoon perhaps? I think you came in a doorway facing me."

"You remember that I did?" he asked, his earnest-