Sometimes she blamed the dulness of the people she met
for her shortcomings. It was impossible not to be stiff with them.
When she chatted with an entertaining man, who made her laugh and
forget herself for a while, she was conscious afterwards of having
been at her best with him. But she saw others who, in stupid
society, were pleasantly at their ease. She began to fear at last
that she was naturally disqualified by her comparatively humble
birth from acquiring the well-bred air for which she envied those
among whom she moved.
One day she conceived a doubt whether Lucian was so safe an
authority and example in matters of personal deportment as she had
hitherto unthinkingly believed. He could not dance; his conversation
was priggish; it was impossible to feel at ease when speaking to him.
Was it courageous to stand in awe of his opinion? Was it courageous
to stand in awe of anybody? Alice closed her lips proudly and began to
be defiant. Then a reminiscence, which had never before failed to
rouse indignation in her, made her laugh. She recalled the
scandalous spectacle of Lucian's formal perpendicularity
overbalanced and doubled up into Mrs. Hoskyn's gilded arm-chair in
illustration of the prize-fighter's theory of effort defeating
itself.
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