"No, never. It is the most difficult thing in the world to say what one likes best until one is forty or thereabouts. All one's youth--which, I take it, extends to about forty--is passed experimentally in determining what one likes best, and one does not know till it is crystallized. By then also it is probably unattainable." Jim laughed again bitterly. "Oh, you need not be afraid," he said, his rebuff now beginning to sting. "I tell you that your chief passion is analysis. You do not care so much what people do, as why they do it. If a Hooligan knocked you down and began stamping on you, I can imagine you saying, 'Stop just a moment to tell me why you are doing this. Does giving pain to me give pleasure to you, or do you personally feel a grudge against me?' Then, when he had told you, you would say, 'Thank you very much. Go on stamping again.'" Marie had detached the unpetalled rose from her dress, and had taken another from the vase in her hand. But she did not pin it in, but, after listening open-mouthed, sat down again with it in her fingers. "I am egotistical, no doubt," she said, "and that must account for my burning desire to know why you think that. I suppose you do think that, Jim, or are you irritated with me for any cause?" The question was unpremeditated, but as soon as she had spoken she could have bitten out her tongue for having said it. Almost certainly, she thought, in the moment's pause that ensued, he would tell her why he was irritated with her. That she knew already, and, of all things in the world, that was the one which she did not wish him to tell her. But his answer came almost immediately. "I don't think there is anything you could do which would irritate me," he said, "and I do think what I have said. I think you are bloodless, Marie; I think you are like what you imagine Maud Brereton to be. And bloodless people are disconcerting. One does not know how to make them hear, how to make them feel the things that the majority of the race feel." Suddenly there rose in her mind a long, far-off, dusty memory. She had been skating one day on a thinly frozen pond, and suddenly felt the ice bend and sway under her, and had said to herself, "The ice is thinner here." On that occasion she had put both feet down and gone straight for the bank. On this occasion she did exactly the same. "You are probably right," she said. "The things which many women do, and find absorption in doing, I think stupid, and, what is worse, vulgar, and what is worst, wicked. I am _bourgeoise_, I am _bonne femme_--that is what you really mean, Jim. It is quite true; it is quite, quite true. And, no doubt, if one is not in the habit of spending all one's energies on--on matters of emotion, one disposes of them in other ways. If one does not give one's self up to feeling, one probably has more time for thinking, because one must do something if one has nerves and brains at all. But the Hooligan business you describe is beyond me, I am afraid."