for the sake of her own show that is of her honesty
not being proof against her desire to keep well with
him herself. She didn t, none the less, otherwise
protest against his remark; there was something else
she was occupied in seeing. It was the handsome
girl alone, one of his own species and his own society,
who had made him feel uncertain; of his certainties
about a mere little American, a cheap exotic, import
ed almost wholesale, and whose habitat, with its
conditions of climate, growth, and cultivation, its
immense profusion, but its few varieties and thin
development, he was perfectly satisfied. The mar
vel was, too, that Milly understood his satisfaction
feeling that she expressed the truth in presently
saying: "Of course; I make out that she must be
difficult; just as I see that I myself must be easy."
And that was what, for all the rest of this occasion,
remained with her as the most interesting thing
that could remain. She was more and more content
herself to be easy; she would have been resigned,
even had it been brought straighter home to her, to
passing for a cheap exotic. Provisionally, at any
rate, that protected her wish to keep herself, with
Lord Mark, in abeyance. They had all affected her
as inevitably knowing each other, and if the hand
some girl's place among them was something even
their initiation couldn't deal with why, then, she
would indeed be a quantity.

[[184]]

p183 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p184w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p185

v?