There was a superficial worldly wisdom in the speech which he would not have anticipated.
"It seems to me rather absurd," she continued placidly.

"Quixotic--the sort of romantic 'live and die unwed' idea that is quite exploded.

Girls nowadays don't wither on their virgin stems if the man they want doesn't happen to be in a position to marry them.

They marry some one else." Tim felt almost shocked.

From his childhood he had invested his mother with a kind of rarefied grace of mental and moral qualities commensurate with her physical beauty, and her enunciation of the cynical creed of modern times staggered him.