Elisabeth shook her head. "No; I have never felt like that. I can understand wanting to do different things at different times of one's life, but I can not comprehend how one person can want to do two opposing things at the same time." "Oh! I can. I can imagine doing a thing, and despising one's self at the time for doing it, and yet not being able to help doing it." "I have heard other people say that, and I can't understand it." "Yet you are so complex; I should have thought you would," said Farquhar. "Yes, I am complex; but not at the same moment. I have two distinct natures, but the two are never on the stage at once. I don't in the least know what St. Paul meant when he said that the evil he would not that he did. I can quite understand doing the evil on Tuesday morning that I would not on Monday afternoon; but I could never do anything and disapprove of it at the same minute." "That is because you are so good--and so cold." "Am I?" "Yes, dear Miss Farringdon; and so amiable. You never do things in a temper." "But I do; I really have got a temper of my own, though nowadays people seem to find difficulty in believing it. I have frequently done things in a temper before now; but as long as the temper lasts I am pleased that I have done them, and feel that I do well to be angry. When the temper is over, I sometimes think differently; but not till then. As I have told you before, my will is so strong that it and I are never at loggerheads with each other; it always rules me completely." Farquhar sighed. "I wish I were as strong as you are; but I am not. And do you mean to tell me that there is no worldly side to you, either; no side that hankers after fleshpots, even while the artist within you is being fed with manna from heaven?" "No; I don't think there is," Elisabeth replied slowly. "I really do not like people any the better for having money and titles and things like that, and it is no use pretending that I do." "I do. I wish I didn't, but I can't help it. It is only you who can help me to look at life from the ideal point of view--you whose feet are still wet with the dew of Olympus, and in whom the Greek spirit is as fresh as it was three thousand years ago." "Oh! I'm not as perfect as all that; far from it! I don't despise people for not having rank or wealth, since rank and wealth don't happen to be the things that interest me. But there are things that do interest me--genius and wit and culture and charm, for instance--and I am quite as hard on the people who lack these gifts, as ever you are on the impecunious nobodies. I confess I am often ashamed of myself when I realize how frightfully I look down upon stupid men and dull women, and how utterly indifferent I am as to what becomes of them. So I really am as great a snob as you are, though I wear my snobbery--like my rue--with a difference."