"Yes. If you want to jolt it to me good and hard that way. I guess that is what it does mean." "I suppose then that the crisis--last night--came about from your little passage with the Chinese waiter? It happened while you were out on the balcony didn't it?" Bertram stared and glowed. "Say, you're a wonder. You reach out and get things before they come to you at all. That's just what did happen." "And then? Or pardon me, I don't want you to tell me any more than it's right for you to tell--any more than you feel like telling." "Oh that's all right. Well, when we got outside it was the same old song. She didn't care enough even to call me down. And like a fool I came out with it. What's the use of telling what she said or what I said? It was just the same way. She kept me dancing. She wouldn't say yes and she wouldn't say no. She seemed anxious about only one thing. She wanted to know if she'd been fair to me." "I suppose she has--!" Kate brought this out as though he had put a question to her. "And you want to know what I think?" "I sure do." "I think she cares--at least a little--shall I tell you all?" Bertram, even in the hottest of this conversation, did not forget the needs of his body. The waiter stood at his elbow. He rushed through the order, and continued: "I want to know everything." "Well, to begin with--Bert Chester, you're a man." "I didn't ask for hot air." "That's all of that. You're an unfinished man. You--haven't had the chance to get all the refinements which people like Eleanor Gray have acquired. Do you see now? You've made it--you've been making it--all for yourself. You had no fortune. It's splendid the way you worked to get all these things. I know the story of how you got through college. Everyone who knows you is proud of that. But--well Eleanor's mother was rich and proud before she married, and her grandparents were richer and prouder. Then she's lived a great deal alone; and she never really blossomed out until she went abroad. So she learned her social ways from Europeans. She's got a lot of British and Continental ideas. "With the rest of us, you know, it doesn't make any difference. You could perceive that by the way we've taken you in. Why, it's really a part of you. You're only two years out of college, hardly that; and you're still studying law; but think how people have taken you up! It is simply that Eleanor looks at it in a different way. It's a pretty peculiarity in one of the sweetest girls I know." Kate paused. Bert made no move to answer. She went on: "Now about the thing you can't grasp in Eleanor. It's this way. You can't see her nature as another _girl_ can. She's just as sweet and tender and delicate as she can be, and she has high ideals--that's one result of her living away from the world. If she were a little warmer in temperament, it might be different, but--" Kate paused here as though pondering whether to reveal or to conceal the thought of her mind.