When I say she exaggerates I don't mean it in the vulgar sense--that she boasts, overstates, gives too fine an account of herself.

I mean literally that she pushes the search for perfection too far--that her merits are in themselves overstrained.

She's too good, too kind, too clever, too learned, too accomplished, too everything.

She's too complete, in a word.

I confess to you that she acts on my nerves and that I feel about her a good deal as that intensely human Athenian felt about Aristides the Just." Isabel looked hard at her cousin; but the mocking spirit, if it lurked in his words, failed on this occasion to peep from his face.