JULIA BRIDE
She gave him back his look, turning pale. "Am I talking of that? Am I talking of what we know? I'm talking of what others feel—of what they have to feel; of what it's just enough for them to know not to be able to get over it, once they do really know it. How do they know what didn't pass between tis, with all the opportunities we had? That's none of their business—if we were idiots enough, on the top of everything! What you may or mayn't have done doesn't count, for you; but there are people for whom it's loathsome that a girl should have gone on like that from one person to another and still pretend to be—well, all that a nice girl is supposed to be. It's as if we had but just waked up, mother and I, to such a remarkable prejudice; and now we have it—when we could do so well without it!—staring us in the face. That mother should have insanely let me, should so vulgarly have taken it for my natural, my social career—that's the disgusting, humiliating thing: with the lovely account it gives of
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