.. Flippancy dropped away from
him.... She liked him. With the most alluring innocence, she did not
conceal that she liked him. He remembered that the last time he called
at his aunt's he had remarked something strange, something disturbing,
in Rachel's candid demeanour towards himself. He had made an
impression on her! He had given her the lightning-stroke! No shadow of
a doubt as to his own worthiness crossed his mind.
What did cross his mind was that she was not quite of his own class.
In the suburb, where "sets" are divided one from another by unscalable
barriers, she could not have aspired to him. But in the kitchen, now
become the most beautiful and agreeable and romantic interior that he
had ever seen--in the kitchen he could somehow perceive with absolute
clearness that the snobbery of caste was silly, negligible, laughable,
contemptible. Yes, he could perceive all that! Life in the kitchen
seemed ideal--life with that loyalty and that candour and that charm
and that lovely seriousness! Moreover, he could teach her. She had
already blossomed--in a fortnight. She was blossoming. She would
blossom further.
Odd that, when he had threatened to pull out a revolver, she, so
accustomed to revolvers, should have taken a girlish alarm! That queer
detail of her behaviour was extraordinarily seductive.
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