"I was going to say—how could stupid people exist if they did not despise their superiors in wit, and intellect, and artistic perception? There is a man at my club, for instance, who is intellectually, as he is physically, a head and shoulders taller than any of his brother members. What reputation has he? Simply that of being ’an amusing young fellow, but—but very shallow, don’t you know.’ The empty-headed idiots of the smoking-room sit and laugh at his keen humour, and delicate irony, and witty stories; and rather patronise and pity him in that he is weak enough to be amusing. A dull man always finds his refuge in calling a man of brighter parts than himself ’shallow.’ You should see this friend of mine when he goes down into the country to see his relations; how he is looked upon at the dinner-table as being only fit to make the women smile; and how some simpering fool of a squire, with nothing more brilliant in his library than a pair of hunting-boots, will grin compassionately to some other thick-headed boor, as though it were a ludicrous thing to see a man make himself so like a woman in being witty and entertaining." "And you think the women in these country-houses more intelligent and amusing than the men?" "God help country-houses when the women are taken out of them!" "What a large portion of my life have I wasted over this abominable Bradshaw!" said Count Schönstein, coming up at that moment, and their conversation was for the present stopped. But Will now recognised more firmly than ever the invisible barrier that was placed between her and the people among whom his life had been cast; and, perhaps, for Dove’s sake, he was a little glad that he could never look upon this too-charming young actress but as the inhabitant of another world. And sometimes, too, he involuntarily echoed Dove’s exclamation, "You are too beautiful to be an actress?"