Yet I should have thought that a preference for my own world, even were it wholly irrational, might seem at least natural and pardonable." "People don't," she answered simply, "like any sign of individual fancy or opinion.

They don't like any one to show that he thinks them wrong even on a matter of taste." "I fear, then, _carissima_, that I must be content with unpopularity.
I may wear the costume of your people; but their thought, their conduct, their inner and outer life, as your father reports them, and as thus far I have seen them, are to me so unnatural, that the more I resemble them externally the more my unlikeness in all else is likely to attract notice.

I am sorry for this, because women are by nature prone to judge even their nearest and dearest by the standard of fashion, and to exact from men almost as close a conformity to that standard as they themselves display.

I fear you will have to forgive many heresies in my conduct as well as in my thoughts." "You cannot suppose," she answered earnestly--she seemed incapable of apprehending irony or jest,--"that I should wish you more like others than you are.

Whatever may happen hereafter, I shall always feel myself the happiest of women in having belonged to one who cares for something beside himself, and holds even life cheaper than love." "I hope so, _carissima_.