They think I must either be very clever or else very disagreeable." "I should not call you clever," said Robert Allitsen grimly.
"No," answered Bernardine pensively.

"But I always did think myself clever until I came here.

Now I am beginning to know better.

But it is rather a shock, isn't it ?" "I have never experienced the shock," he said.
"Then you still think you are clever ?" she asked.
"There is only one man my intellectual equal in Petershof, and he is not here any more," he said gravely.

"Now I come to remember, he died.
That is the worst of making friendships here; people die." "Still, it is something to be left king of the intellectual world," said Bernardine.