Louis looked at him casually.  Marcella was coming to understand that he looked upon illness with a certain hardness and lack of pity that surprised her; he was immensely interested in it, he liked to dabble in it, but not from a passion of healing nearly so much as from curiosity and technical interest.  To him, in illness, curing the patient mattered infinitely less than beating the disease.  He had a queer snobbishness about illness, too, that amazed her.  To him Knollys, a steward, ill meant infinitely less than the illness of a member of his own class would have meant.  This struck Marcella as illogical.  To her it seemed that, in illness at least, all men were brothers.

“There’s a stoker just died of heat apoplexy:  there’ll be a funeral presently,” he said coolly.  “What on earth are you doing?”

“People are so unkind.  Knollys got into trouble yesterday because these silly things were not clean,” she said, polishing away furiously.

“But you can’t do the work of a servant,” he said, aghast.

“I can.  Of course I can.  I often have.  I’ve worked in the fields with the men, and I’ve milked the cows and made the butter.  Oh, lots of things—­”

“Oh well, I suppose a farmer’s daughter can do those things, Marcella.  But, look here, old girl, when we’re married you’ll have to be on your dignity a bit.”

She flushed a little and the storm light came into her eyes.  Louis did not see it.  He sat on the edge of the table, and expostulated with her for a long time.  But she went on until the last spoon was polished.

“Don’t you think we’d better get something for Knollys?  Sal volatile or iced water, or something?” she said at last, looking at her black hands.

He shrugged his shoulders.

“Oh, leave him alone.  It’s typical of the servant class to be bowled over on the slightest provocation.  I expect, as a matter of fact, he can hear what we’re saying now.  He’s got you taped pretty well and knew that if he worked on your sympathies you’d do his work while he miked about.  The working class is always like that—­no backbone.”

She wondered if he were joking, but she saw from his solemn face that he meant it all, and she gathered that he considered himself very much better than Knollys.  He did not see the contemptuous amusement in her face, and went on, stammering a little because he had at last brought himself to say something that had been on his mind for days.

He lit a cigarette nervously, fumbled with a bunch of keys in his trousers pocket and then, looking at her dirty hands, said: 

“L-l-look here, old girl.  I d-don’t w-want to quarrel with you.  But I w-want you to f-face things a bit.  Y-you s-see—­you’ve been used to a class of society quite different from mine.  You know—­look here, I say, I don’t want you to go making faux pas.”

“What do you mean?” she asked ominously.

“That’s French for mistakes, don’t you know—­mistakes in—­er—­well, what one might call breeding, don’t you know.  Y-you know—­associating with stewards and—­and—­common people like Jimmy, for instance.  He’s the very lowest bourgeois type.”