He hated gatherings of all sorts unless they were of friends who would respond to all he had to say and whom he might insidiously dominate. Yet he had encountered Julia first at the home of Mrs. Hurst, whose bourgeois pretensions to esthetic interest he despised. These heterogeneous assemblies gave him the cold impression of a mob. Anything which affected him and at the same time evaded him was unadmittedly alarming. He had not appeared at his best that night until he was able to lead Julia aside and talk to her alone. Then he became suddenly at ease. There was a slightly bitter humility about her confessions of ignorance that made him feel her potentially appreciative in a genuine sense.
Strangely enough the frankness of her self-depreciation disarmed him. He felt that he must search for a hidden pretension that would show her weak and allow him an approach. Wherever she displayed symptoms of confidence he confronted her with her dependence on illusion. He told himself that all that one individual owed another was the means to truth. Believing in the dignity of self-responsibility, he could not assume the burden of Julia's discouragement. He imagined her unhappy. If he helped her to see herself he was aiding her to attain the only ultimate values in life.
After he and Julia became lovers he was troubled not a little by the necessity for concealment, for he had told her so frequently that her relation to Laurence had been falsified by the accumulation of reserves.
Dudley had said so often that he considered Laurence a repressed and misunderstood man that Julia, with an antagonism which she did not confess to herself, asked her lover to dine at her home. Meeting Dudley as Laurence's wife again put her on the offensive regarding everything that concerned her house and the usual circumstances of her existence. She had never taken such care in composing a meal as she did for this occasion, and she spent half an hour arranging the flowers in a low bowl on the table.
When Dudley came he greeted Laurence with peculiar eagerness. Julia found it hard to forgive her lover for making himself ridiculous.
During dinner the guest led the talk which was exclusively between the two men. He insisted on discussing bacteriological subjects with Laurence. Laurence deferred politely to Dudley's ignorance.