' It really is awful what a beast one is!' she said. ' But there, somehow, where what I am describing to you is natural, where everyone is so extraordinarily kind and so entirely uncultured, the vulgarity did not strike me. I like the people, and, as you know, I like the sense of wealth. Who is it who talks about moral geography? Burke, I think. Well, that is a very suggestive expression. You can do in New York what you cannot possibly conceive doing in England, just as you can grow plants in the South which will not stand our climate.'
Charlie shook his head.
' I don't think I could stand that anywhere,' he said.
' Oh yes, you could. Milieu, environment is everything; but now, as I sit here and look at the big trees in the garden, covered with that wash of moonlight, it is different. You too—you are so very un-American. I always told you you were old-fashioned.'
Charlie looked at her in silence a moment.
' And you,' he said at length—' you yourself? Have you changed, as Ginger prophesied? Do I seem to you more old-fashioned than ever? I am a very good test question, I imagine.'
' Why?'
' Because you have seen, have you not? a good deal of my double, Bilton. The contrast of our natures ought to be all the more apparent for the similarity of our appearance.'
She got up.
' I have a great deal to talk to you about, Charlie,' she said; ' but it is after-dinner talk. A good deal is about you; the rest is about myself. I have also made another discovery: I am a more profound egotist than I knew. Did I always strike you as egotistic?'
' Dominant people are always egotistic,' said he.
' Dominant? Am I dominant? You will not think so when you have heard.'
