But I can't." Nanda, after a slow headshake, covered him with one of the dimmest of her smiles.

"You needn't say it.

I know perfectly which it is." She held him an instant, after which she went on: "It's simply that you wish me fully to understand that you're one who, in perfect sincerity, doesn't mind one straw how awful--!" "Yes, how awful ?" He had kindled, as he paused, with his new eagerness.
"Well, one's knowledge may be.

It doesn't shock in you a single hereditary prejudice." "Oh 'hereditary'-- !" Mitchy ecstatically murmured.
"You even rather like me the better for it; so that one of the reasons why you couldn't have told me--though not of course, I know, the only one--is that you would have been literally almost ashamed.

Because, you know," she went on, "it IS strange." "My lack of hereditary-- ?" "Yes, discomfort in presence of the fact I speak of.