My little muffs of priests with their silly obedience won't come so badly out of it.' Unconsciously he had taken a seat beside her, and was looking at her with a sharp imperious air.

She dimly understood that he was not talking to her but to a much larger audience, that he was still in fact in the grip of "the book." But that he should have anyway addressed so many consecutive sentences to her excited her after these many days of absolute neglect and indifference on his part; she felt a certain tremor of pulse.

Instead, however, of diminishing self-command, it bestowed it.
'Well, if that's the only way of running the machine--the Catholic way I mean,'-- her words came out a little hurried and breathless--'I don't see how _we_ exist.' 'You?
America ?' She nodded.
'_Do_ you exist ?--in any sense that matters ?' He laughed as he spoke; but his tone provoked her.

She threw up her head a little, suddenly grave.
'Of course we know that you dislike us.' He showed a certain embarrassment.
'How do you know ?' 'Oh!--we read what you said of us.' 'I was badly reported,' he said, smiling.
'No,'-- she insisted.

'But you were mistaken in a great many things--very, very much mistaken.