when fortune put this paragraph in her way.

"Isn't it disgusting?" he asked. "I don't see how Armiger could let them
do it. I hope to heaven she'll never see it!"

His mother looked up from the paragraph and asked,

"Why?"

"What would she think of me?"

"I don't know. She might have expected something of the kind."

"How expect something of the kind? Am I one of the self-advertisers?"

"Well, she must have realized that she was doing rather a bold thing."

"Bold?"

"Venturesome," Mrs. Verrian compromised to the kindling anger in her
son's eyes.

"I don't understand you, mother. I thought you agreed with me about the
writer of that letter--her sincerity, simplicity."

"Sincerity, yes. But simplicity--Philip, a thoroughly single-minded
girl never wrote that letter. You can't feel such a thing as I do.
A man couldn't. You can paint the character of women, and you do it
wonderfully--but, after all, you can't know them as a woman does."