Page:The Tragic Muse (London & New York, Macmillan & Co., 1890), Volume 1.djvu/106

98 Her maid appeared, busying herself a moment; and when she had gone out Julia said suddenly to her companion: "Should you mind telling me what's the matter with you?"

"The matter with me?"

"Don't you want to stand?"

"I'll do anything to oblige you."

"Why should you oblige me?"

"Why, isn't that the way people treat you?" asked Nick.

"They treat me best when they are a little serious."

"My dear Julia, it seems to me I'm serious enough. Surely it isn't an occasion to be so very solemn, the idea of going down into a stodgy little country town and talking a lot of rot."

"Why do you call it 'rot'?"

"Because I can think of no other name that, on the whole, describes it so well. You know the sort of thing. Come! you've listened to enough of it, first and last. One blushes for it when one sees it in print, in the local papers. The local papers—ah, the thought of them makes me want to stay in Paris."

"If you don't speak well it's your own fault: you know how to, perfectly. And you usually do."

"I always do, and that's what I'm ashamed of. I've got the cursed humbugging trick of it. I speak beautifully. I can turn it on, a fine flood of it, at the shortest notice. The better it is the worse it is, the kind is so inferior. It has nothing to do with the truth or the search for it; nothing to do with intelligence, or candour, or honour. It's an appeal to everything that for one's self one despises," the young man went on—"to stupidity, to ignorance, to density, to the love