She believed it completely.

That was the thing the recorder caught that mattered most.

Not that she was mean.

That she was certain.

Meanness, after all, can be a mood.

A tired person snaps; a frightened person lashes out; these are failures, but they are human failures, and they come attached to shame and apology and the wish to have done better.

What I heard in Sabine’s voice was none of that.

There was no strain in it, no guilt riding underneath, no small private wince at her own behavior.

There was only ease — the deep, restful ease of a person who has never once questioned her right to treat another human being as refuse, because she has organized the entire world into those who count and those who do not, and placed herself, permanently and comfortably, among the former.

That is not a lapse.