She spoke calmly, indifferently. But in every word she spoke he could hear the note of a perfect pride, of a pride so intense as to be quite careless, quite impersonal, quite unself-conscious. It was true that she did not care. But her indifference was based on no obtrusive conceit, on no selfish ill-breeding, no instinct for flamboyance and advertisement. It was the deep base of her nature, a serene impermeability to other people’s opinion, and Gundred had something of the same quality; but Gundred was indifferent because her pride made her feel superior to all the world. The pride of Isabel was that higher, more terrific pride which leaps beyond a mere comparison of one’s self with others, and is simply an all-absorbing sense of individuality. Whether Isabel was superior to others she never cared to stop and consider; all she cared for was the thought that she was she and they were they. The comparison was still there, but implicit, subconscious, tacit. Her personality defied criticism by ignoring it. Kingston suddenly found the serene audacity of her attitude a challenge to his interest. To wake feeling in such a Stylites of egoism, to win her praise or her condemnation, would be a task more piquant to a professed emotionalist than any seduction to a sensualist. To seduce the mind of Isabel, to draw it down from its heights, and force it to feel, fear, or hate--at least, to abandon its indifferentism, there was a test of skill. Had the indifference been a pose, the task would have been cheap, lacking in adventure. That it was mere undecorated nature was at once the defender’s great strength and the besieger’s strong attraction. It challenged arrogantly, irresistibly. Then Kingston remembered how much he disliked his cousin, and refused to hear the call. Strenuously he shut his ears to it, and gave her appeal a colourless answer. ‘In some ways,’ he said, ‘I suppose it is as well not to care what people think or say. But the position is always an ungraceful one, and is certain ruin to one’s hopes of popularity. However, if you don’t care, of course, popularity does not matter to you, either one way or the other.’ ‘No,’ said Isabel; ‘one demands it, and expects it. And if one doesn’t get it as one’s right, one refuses to accept it as anyone’s favour. And obviously the lack of it can make no real difference. How can unpopularity affect one’s opinion of one’s self? And that is the only thing in the world that really does matter. By that alone one rises or falls, is glorified or condemned.’ She spoke quietly and carelessly, as much to herself as to him or the world at large. Just so, in such cool, insolently indifferent tones might Queen Isabel have discussed her own attitude from a dispassionate external point of view. ‘Incidentally,’ replied Kingston, ‘one runs the risk of giving any amount of pain to any number of inoffensive people.’