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‘My dear lady, I have no conscience!’
‘Well, I advise you to cultivate one. You’ll need it the next
time you go to America.’
‘I shall probably never go again.’
‘Are you ashamed to show yourself?’
Ralph meditated with a mild smile. ‘I suppose that if one
has no conscience one has no shame.’
‘Well, you’ve got plenty of assurance,’ Henrietta declared.
‘Do you consider it right to give up your country?’
‘Ah, one doesn’t give up one’s country any more than
one gives up one’s grandmother. They’re both antecedent
to choice—elements of one’s composition that are not to be
eliminated.’
‘I suppose that means that you’ve tried and been worsted.
What do they think of you over here?’
‘They delight in me.’
‘That’s because you truckle to them.’
‘Ah, set it down a little to my natural charm!’ Ralph
sighed.
‘I don’t know anything about your natural charm. If
you’ve got any charm it’s quite unnatural. It’s wholly ac-
quired—or at least you’ve tried hard to acquire it, living over
here. I don’t say you’ve succeeded. It’s a charm that I don’t
appreciate, anyway. Make yourself useful in some way, and
then we’ll talk about it.’
‘Well, now, tell me what I shall do,’ said Ralph.
‘Go right home, to begin with.’
‘Yes, I see. And then?’
‘Take right hold of something.’

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