The thing was done, and badly done. Angela saw
herself a worm, and Nick noble as a tall pine-tree of the mountains.
Still, it was best that the break should have come, one way or another.
"Why on earth should I care?" she asked herself angrily. '"We could never
go on having a real friendship, all our lives--I and a man like that. He's
a splendid fellow--of course, above me in lots of ways; but we're of
different worlds. I don't see how anything could change that. What a pity
it all is--not for my sake, but for his!" And she thought how awkward his
fit of shy self-consciousness had made him appear in contrast with a
cultured man, a cosmopolitan like Falconer. It was she who had made him
self-conscious. She knew that. But there was the fact. Falconer was a man
of her world. Nick Hilliard was not. It was sad that Nick, with his good
looks and intelligence and fine qualities, could not have had advantages
when a boy--could not have gone to a university or at least associated
with gentlefolk as their equal--which he was in heart. But now he had got
those slipshod ways of speaking he could never change. And there were a
thousand other things which put him outside the pale of the men she knew.
She would not listen when a sarcastic voice within defended Nick,
sneering, "Oh, yes, Prince Paolo di Sereno and some of his friends are
_far_ superior to Mr.
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