"How, love?" he said, making a little grimace. "We like her—we love her—as if she were a mother. You say love—" He raised his shoulders slightly, with a shrug. And all the time he looked down at Alvina from under his dusky eye-lashes, as if watching her sideways, and his mouth had the peculiar, stupid, self-conscious, half-jeering smile. Alvina was a little bit annoyed. But she felt that a great instinctive good-naturedness came out of him, he was self-conscious and constrained, knowing she did not follow his language of gesture. For him, it was not yet quite natural to express himself in speech. Gesture and grimace were instantaneous, and spoke worlds of things, if you would but accept them.
But certainly he was stupid, in her sense of the word. She could hear Mr. May's verdict of him: "
