She was interested in
everybody, and she liked the talk of these clever literary, artistic,
clerical, even theatrical people, and she liked the sort of court with
which they recognized her fashion as well as her cleverness; it was very
pleasant to be treated intellectually as if she were one of themselves,
and socially as if she was not habitually the same, but a sort of guest
in Bohemia, a distinguished stranger. If it was Arcadia rather than
Bohemia, still she felt her quality of distinguished stranger. The
flattery of it touched her fancy, and not her vanity; she had very little
vanity. Beaton's devotion made the same sort of appeal; it was not so
much that she liked him as she liked being the object of his admiration.
She was a girl of genuine sympathies, intellectual rather than
sentimental. In fact, she was an intellectual person, whom qualities of
the heart saved from being disagreeable, as they saved her on the other
hand from being worldly or cruel in her fashionableness. She had read a
great many books, and had ideas about them, quite courageous and original
ideas; she knew about pictures--she had been in Wetmore's class; she was
fond of music; she was willing to understand even politics; in Boston she
might have been agnostic, but in New York she was sincerely religious;
she was very accomplished; and perhaps it was her goodness that prevented
her feeling what was not best in Beaton.
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