A moment previous they had been amiably exchanging idle gossip from their saddles, gradually falling back behind the others—Silvette, Christine, Jack, and Colonel Curmew—who had cantered on forward; and now, suddenly out of a clear sky, not apropos of anything, Edgerton had flashed out the bolt of his contempt for the House of Rivett—for his ox, his ass, his servants, and all that was Rivett’s. "Jim," she remarked, "isn’t it rather bad taste of you to say that?" "Why? I am paid for being here." But he realized that she was right, and it made him sullen. "His roof shelters you none the less," she said quietly. "Yours is rather a fine-drawn sense of hospitality, it seems to me," he retorted. "I can’t snap at the hand that feeds me." "Good Lord! May a man not have his own ideas?" "Under lock and key, yes." "All right," he said, reddening; "only I supposed I could be frank with you." "Are we actually on any such footing?" she asked quietly. "I thought so—even a footing on which I permit myself to accept such a rebuke from you." She turned in her saddle. "Permit yourself?" she repeated. "Do you mean _condescend_?" "I mean what I say," he retorted sulkily, still smarting under her rebuke. Her cheeks were bright with anger, her lips compressed as though silence had become an effort. Presently, however, she looked across at him with perfect sweetness and composure. "No, you don’t mean what you say, Jim. If you did, you would be at a disadvantage with me, and you don’t want to be that; nor do I wish to be, ever." He said obstinately: "I’m getting sick of this Adriutha business." "I predicted you would." "Well, I am.... It isn’t false pride; I don’t care what they think about me. If I chose to be a waiter in a Broadway café, their opinion wouldn’t concern me.... I’m simply weary of the place, the majority of the people—what they think and do, their private life, their mere coming in and going out.... It isn’t the pitiable absurdity of their offensive environment alone, the horror of the architecture, the gilded entrails of their abode—it’s the whole bally combination! ... I’m sick—sick! And that’s the truth, Diana." "I think," she said, smiling, "that you are also a little bit bored with us." He looked up at her, perplexed, already beginning to be very much ashamed of his outburst, already conscious of a painful reaction from his unrestraint. "Diana," he said impulsively, "I’m just a plain brute, and rather a vulgar one; but, do you know, there isn’t anybody else in the world I’d have permitted to hear that outburst—whether you take it as a compliment or not." "You mean you don’t care what I think of you?" He thought for a moment. "I can’t mean that, of course." "You might, very easily." "I couldn’t; I do care what you think of me. Probably what I meant was that I—dare say things to you; that I’ve a sort of instinct that I can come to you in an emergency——"