"
He stopped because his wife had clasped again her hands behind her head
and was no longer looking at him.
"It's perfectly obvious," he began again. "We have been living amongst
most distinguished men and women and your attitude to them has been
always so--so negative! You would never recognize the importance of
achievements, of acquired positions. I don't remember you ever admiring
frankly any political or social success. I ask myself what after all you
could possibly have expected from life."
"I could never have expected to hear such a speech from you. As to what
I did expect! . . . I must have been very stupid."
"No, you are anything but that," declared Mr. Travers, conscientiously.
"It isn't stupidity." He hesitated for a moment. "It's a kind of
wilfulness, I think. I preferred not to think about this grievous
difference in our points of view, which, you will admit, I could not
have possibly foreseen before we. . . ."
A sort of solemn embarrassment had come over Mr. Travers. Mrs. Travers,
leaning her chin on the palm of her hand, stared at the bare matchboard
side of the hut.
"Do you charge me with profound girlish duplicity?" she asked, very
softly.
The inside of the deckhouse was full of stagnant heat perfumed by
a slight scent which seemed to emanate from the loose mass of Mrs.
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