"I should say there were more than five." "You've been very fortunate, then," said Hirst.

"Or perhaps I've been very unfortunate." He became silent.
"Should you say I was a difficult kind of person to get on with ?" he asked sharply.
"Most clever people are when they're young," Helen replied.
"And of course I am--immensely clever," said Hirst.

"I'm infinitely cleverer than Hewet.

It's quite possible," he continued in his curiously impersonal manner, "that I'm going to be one of the people who really matter.

That's utterly different from being clever, though one can't expect one's family to see it," he added bitterly.
Helen thought herself justified in asking, "Do you find your family difficult to get on with ?" "Intolerable.