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many things to yourself. That’s what she wanted to express.
If you thought she was trying to—to attract you, you were
very wrong.’
‘It’s true it was an odd way, but I did think she was trying
to attract me. Forgive my depravity.’
‘You’re very conceited. She had no interested views, and
never supposed you would think she had.’
‘One must be very modest then to talk with such wom-
en,’ Ralph said humbly. ‘But it’s a very strange type. She’s too
personal—considering that she expects other people not to
be. She walks in without knocking at the door.’
‘Yes,’ Isabel admitted, ‘she doesn’t sufficiently recognize
the existence of knockers; and indeed I’m not sure that she
doesn’t think them rather a pretentious ornament. She thinks
one’s door should stand ajar. But I persist in liking her.’
‘I persist in thinking her too familiar,’ Ralph rejoined,
naturally somewhat uncomfortable under the sense of hav-
ing been doubly deceived in Miss Stackpole.
‘Well,’ said Isabel, smiling, ‘I’m afraid it’s because she’s
rather vulgar that I like her.’
‘She would be flattered by your reason!’
‘If I should tell her I wouldn’t express it in that way. I
should say it’s because there’s something of the ‘people’ in
her.’
‘What do you know about the people? and what does she,
for that matter?’
‘She knows a great deal, and I know enough to feel that
she’s a kind of emanation of the great democracy—of the
continent, the country, the nation. I don’t say that she sums

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