"Oh! I know you'd always be honest about these things. I feel you would--about everything. It's all these lies that are so impossible: I think I've come to feel now after this first season that the only thing that matters is being straight. It is the only thing--if a person just gives you what they've got--what _they've_ got, not what someone else is supposed to have. May Eversley used to say that people's minds are like soup--thick or clear--but they're only thick because they let them get thick with other people's opinions--you don't mind all this?" she said, suddenly pausing, afraid lest he should be bored. "It's most awfully interestin'," he said from the bottom of his heart. "There are some men and women--I've met one or two--who're just made up of Truth. You know it the minute you're with them. And they'll have pluck too, of course--Courage goes with it. Our family," she ended, "are of course the most terrible liars that have ever been--ever----" "Oh! I say----" he began, protesting. "Oh! but yes--they run everything on it. My uncle Richard ran through Parliament beautifully because he never said what he meant. And Aunt Adela--_and_ Uncle John, although he's a dear. But then my grandmother brought them up to it. My grandmother would have about three clever people and then muddle all the rest so that the three clever ones can have everything in their hands----" "Look here," he broke in, "I'm most awfully fond of your grandmother--we're tremendous pals----" "You may be--I hate her. Oh! I don't hate her with melodrama, I don't want to strangle her or beat her face or burn her, but I'm frightened of her and she's always making me do things I'm ashamed of. That's the best reason for hating anyone there is." "But she's such a sportsman. One of the old kind. One----." "Oh! I know all that you can say. I've heard it so many times. But she's all wrong. There isn't any good in her. She's just remorseless and selfish and stubborn. She thinks she ran the world once and she wants to do it still." "That's all rather fine, _I_ think," said Roddy. "I agree with her a bit. I think most people have _got_ to be run--they just can't run themselves, so you have to put things into them." "Well, that's just where we differ," she said sharply. "It isn't so. That's where all the muddle comes in. If everyone were just himself without anything _borrowed_--Oh! the brave world it'd be----" Then she laughed. "But I'm all wrong myself, you know. I'm as muddled as anyone. I've got all the true, real me there, but all the Beaminster part has slurred it over. But I've got a horrid fear that Truth gets tired of waiting too long. One day, when you're not expecting it, it comes up and says--'Now you choose--your only chance. _Are_ you going to use me or not? If not, I'm going'--How awful if one didn't realize the moment was there, and missed it."