And then she thought to herself, "I'm behaving exactly as I said I wouldn't behave," whereupon she relaxed all her muscles and said, in her reasonable way: "Tell me what I ought to read, then." Ralph had unconsciously been irritated by Mary, and he now delivered himself of a few names of great poets which were the text for a discourse upon the imperfection of Mary's character and way of life.
"You live with your inferiors," he said, warming unreasonably, as he knew, to his text.

"And you get into a groove because, on the whole, it's rather a pleasant groove.

And you tend to forget what you're there for.

You've the feminine habit of making much of details.

You don't see when things matter and when they don't.