"Now, Jack, please don't be sentimental. You know how I hate it. Besides you have interrupted me just when I was convincing you that education will solve the race problem, and that is annoying." Poor Jack! Catherine little imagined what courage that interruption had taken. Nor did she realize how unheeding he had been as she rolled forth her arguments. (She had just been reading an article in _The North American Review_.)
"But, you know, I have been wanting to speak for..."
"I thought you knew better, too," Catherine continued a little sorrowfully, "a person of my ambitious aspirations" (Catherine lived for ambitious aspirations), "isn't going to be happy settling down into a general entertainer and housekeeper for mankind, always sweet and pretty and dainty, standing every evening on the little porch all tumbling over with honeysuckle, dressed in white with a red rose tucked in my belt (that's your ideal, isn't it?) and a hand stretched forth in undulating curves to welcome you. This way." Catherine stood up, balanced herself and nearly fell down. "No, I can't even do it. And then I'm not 'sweet and lovely.' I hate 'sweet and lovely' girls. Why, every girl who hasn't any looks, or any brains, or anything else, is considered 'sweet and lovely.'"
"I never said you were 'sweet and lovely.'"
"Oh! then you consider me horrid and disagreeable, do you? Well, that's flattering. No, I can't marry you. Such a catastrophe has never once entered my head." Catherine grew pensive. "I can't imagine anything more frightful than playing the piano, arranging flowers, and being charming, to eternity." Jack had jumped up from his seat by the piano and stalked over to the window where he stood biting his lips and beating the floor with one foot, gazing out into the black night with an impatiently reflective air. When Catherine finished, he spoke half to himself and half to the night.
"Just what Charlie Dickenson warned me would happen. 'See here, old chap,' he said, 'if you don't want to be the laughing stock of the whole club you'd better steer clear of Catherine Neville. Those college girls are chock full of notions. I suppose she does like you in a way, because you listen to her theories. But it is a ticklish business. Remember poor Harry Cockran, the trouble he had!' ... I thought she liked me. But I see now that one can't expect anything sensible from them." Catherine did not appear to listen. She was playing a series of changing chords on the piano. But the chords grew louder and louder and gradually passed into the minor key, until at the last word she spun round on the stool.