He did not love her for what she thought of Praps and Vanderwater and English professors, and he was coming to realize, with increasing conviction, that he possessed brain-areas and stretches of knowledge which she could never comprehend nor know existed.
In music she thought him unreasonable, and in the matter of opera not only unreasonable but wilfully perverse.
"How did you like it ?" she asked him one night, on the way home from the opera.
It was a night when he had taken her at the expense of a month's rigid economizing on food.

After vainly waiting for him to speak about it, herself still tremulous and stirred by what she had just seen and heard, she had asked the question.
"I liked the overture," was his answer.

"It was splendid." "Yes, but the opera itself ?" "That was splendid too; that is, the orchestra was, though I'd have enjoyed it more if those jumping-jacks had kept quiet or gone off the stage." Ruth was aghast.
"You don't mean Tetralani or Barillo ?" she queried.
"All of them--the whole kit and crew." "But they are great artists," she protested.
"They spoiled the music just the same, with their antics and unrealities." "But don't you like Barillo's voice ?" Ruth asked.

"He is next to Caruso, they say." "Of course I liked him, and I liked Tetralani even better.

Her voice is exquisite--or at least I think so." "But, but--" Ruth stammered.