"No, you're beautiful. I expected you to be beautiful." There was a hint of coldness in her voice, as if she disliked the implication that her son might be lacking in taste. "It's the other things I'm surprised at: that you're clever, that you're reflective, that you feel deeply." "As a matter of fact," said Ellen, confidentially, leaning across the table, "since we're being honest, I don't mind saying that I think you're not over-stating it. But how do you know all that? I'm sure I've been most petty and disagreeable ever since I arrived. I've just been hoping it's not the climate that's doing it, for that'd be hard on Richard and you." The other woman became almost confused. "Oh, that was me! That was me!" she said earnestly. "I told you I was evasive. One form it takes is that when I meet people I'm very much interested in, I can't show my interest directly; I take cover behind a pretence of abstraction. I polish my nails and do silly things like that, and people think I'm cold, and stupid about the particular point they want me to see, and they try to attract my attention by behaving wildly, and that usually means behaving badly. It was my fault, it was my fault!" "Indeed, it was my own ill nature," said Ellen stoutly. "But let us cease this moral babble, as Milton says. I wish you'd tell me why you're surprised that I should be clever, though you were quite cairtain that he would have chosen a good-looking gairl?" Mrs. Yaverland explained hesitantly, delicately. "Richard has tried to fall in love before, you know. And he has always chosen such stupid women." Ellen was puzzled and displeased, though of course it was not the notion that he had tried to fall in love with stupid women that distressed her, and not merely the notion of his trying to fall in love with other women. Thank goodness she was modern and therefore without jealousy. "Why did he do that? Why did he do that?"