Instead, the scene at the Semiramis played over and over in my head. Humiliation is not the same as embarrassment, I realized. If you know yourself to be clumsy and never pretend otherwise, you might well be embarrassed when you trip over your own feet upon entering a room, but you won’t be ashamed. You can laugh at yourself and shrug the embarrassment off.

Humiliation, by contrast, does not merely require open recognition of an acknowledged foible. Humiliation is public exposure of some secret vanity. You might gaze into a mirror holding your head just so, and your eyes sparkle at your own best self. Then perhaps you leave a bathroom at college, for example, thinking that you really look rather nice this morning, all things considered, only to overhear someone remark, “Good Lord, if I looked that bad, I’d never go out in daylight.” You discover that not even your own modest opinion of yourself is shared. You are not merely homely but also deluded, and vain, and ridiculous. That is humiliation.

And someone had lied to me, but who? Colonel Lawrence or Miss Bell? Was it a short-legged dog or a bare-limbed woman who had aroused such animosity? Was the lie a kind one, told to spare my feelings, or a harsh one, meant to cut a potential rival who had dared to be friendly with Miss Bell’s own dear boy?

Or had each of them told me a part of the truth? Certainly there was something about Lawrence’s tone that might have implied, Yes, I was lying about why the doorman blocked your way, but I found a perfectly good explanation that saved your pride, and that’s merely good manners, don’t you agree? And perhaps Miss Bell had provided accurate information about local custom, even though she chose to do so in a way that seemed calculated to inflict as much mortification as possible.