'That is looked at from a very low plane, Monsignor; unusually low for you.'
'I can imagine so many things worse for her, that is all,' said Melville, with an apology in his tone. 'Certainly she ought to have a mate like a shepherd in Theocritus' pastorals, but as those shepherds exist not, at least this side of the Alps----'
'Because they are better than hunters,' said Melville curtly.
'Monsignor is prejudiced to-day,' said his hostess. 'Decidedly this Galatea must be worth seeing, and the island itself sounds idyllic. I did not know there was anything so near us still so like Bernardin de St. Pierre. Dear Melville, go and bring your treasure to us just as she is; just as Loswa has sketched her, red cap, bare feet, and striped sea-gown. The moment these people are _endimanchées_ they are horrible.'
'She does not belong to "those people,"' said Melville, a little impatiently. 'Her mother was an actress of Paris. I think you might dress her how you would, she would look well. She has a patrician look like those girls of Magna Grecia, who are as ignorant as the stones they tread, but have the port of goddesses.'
'I will see this especial young goddess,' said Nadine, who never relinquished a whim when it encountered opposition.
'Will you make Gros Louis more acceptable to her?' he said angrily.
'You will create one more _déclassée_, then, when there are already so many!'
'Yes,' replied Melville with a certain sternness. 'Once is enough. Discontent is born at a touch. Content is a thing which no one can create; but discontent almost anyone can bring about with a word. Merely to see you, Madame, would be to render this poor child wretched and ashamed all the rest of her days. I mean no compliment; only a fact. You float in the very empyrean of culture; you can only make this young barbarian conscious of her barbarianism. What is the curse of our age? That every class is wretched because it is straining forever on tiptoe, striving to reach into the class above it.'
'Dear Monsignor, I think they always did. Colbert stretched the draper's yard measure till it reached the throne, and Wolsey stood on the chopping-block till he was tall enough to touch hands with king and pope. It is nothing new, though modern democracy thinks it is.'