She had laughed at his incessant solemnity as the badge of a fool, and adored Lewis's light-heartedness as the true air of the great.

But she had been mistaken.

Things were what they seemed.

The light-hearted was the half-hearted, "the wandering dilettante," Mr.Stocks had called him, "the worst type of the pseudo-culture of our universities." She told herself she hated the whole affectation of breeding and chivalry.

Those men--Lewis and his friends--were always kind and soft-spoken to her and her sex.