"You say I was rude,"--he went on,--"If I was, need you have been rude too?"
She found utterance quickly.
"I was not rude---" she began.
"Pardon me,--you were! Rude to me--and still more rude to yourself! The last was the worst affront, in my opinion!"
"I do not understand you," she said, impatiently--"Your ideas of women are not those of the present day---"
"Thank God, they are not!" he replied--"I am glad to be in that respect, old-fashioned! You say you do not understand me. Now that is not true! You do understand! You know very well that if I was rude in my UNpremeditated speech, you were much more rude in your premeditated act!--that of deliberately spoiling your womanly self by doing what you know in your own heart was--will you forgive me the word?--unwomanly!"
Maryllia flushed red.
"There is no harm in smoking," she said, coldly;--"it is quite the usual thing nowadays for ladies to enjoy their cigarettes. Why should they not? It is nothing new. Spanish women have always smoked--Austrian and Italian women smoke freely without any adverse comment--in fact, the custom is almost universal. English women have been the last, certainly, to adopt it--but then, England is always behind every country in everything!"
She spoke with a hard flippancy,--and she knew it. Walden's eyes darkened into a deeper gravity.
"Miss Vancourt, this England of ours was once upon a time not behind, but BEFORE every nation in the whole world for the sweetness, purity and modesty of its women! That it has become one with less enlightened races in the deliberate unsexing and degradation of womanhood does not now, and will not in the future, redound to its credit. But I am prolonging a discussion uselessly,-- " He waited a moment. "I shall trouble you no more with my opinions, believe me,--nor shall I ever again intrude my presence upon yourself or your guests,"--he continued, slowly,--"As I have already said, I am sorry to have offended YOU,--but I am not sorry to have spoken my mind! I do not care a jot what your friends from London think of me or say of me,--their criticism, good or bad, is to me a matter of absolute indifference--but I had thought--I had hoped---"
He paused,--his voice for the moment failing him. Maryllia looked at his pale, earnest face, and a sudden sense of shamed compunction smote her heart. Her anger was fast cooling down,--and with the swift change of mood which made her so variable and bewitching, she said, more gently: "Well, Mr. Walden? You thought--you hoped?"