He remembered that a cynical compatriot had once told him that American women - the pretty ones, and this gave a largeness to the axiom - were at once the most exacting in the world and the least endowed with a sense of indebtedness.
From Henry James' Daisy Miller this caption takes the American beauty/brat and gives her a slap across the face. Except for the one that fills such a characteristic (or label) is usually unaware that she deserves such a characteristic (or label). Funny how that works. There are some women who are unconscious of their beauty, a fragile sort of innocence. For example, my fiance is beautiful. In my eyes she is the most beautiful person in the world. In her eyes, she is not very beautiful at all. She spends too much time in comparisons of what others look like and who she might be if she looked different. Nothing I can do will really change that. It is part of her insecurity. I say many things, compliments and praises of her beauty are on my mind all the time and fall from my lips just as frequently. Still she won't believe me. Again, it's her insecurity. Nevertheless, she is - in her eyes - unconscious. Then there are others. There are those who are unconscious of their brattiness. They might be aware (or conscious) of their beauty, hence the brattiness. But they will be unaware of what kind of person they are. They will be aware of their beautiful "endowment" but not of their "exacting" behaviour or their lack of "indebtedness" (that is, ungratefulness).
Probably the best medium between a bratty beauty and an insecure beauty is the beauty that is indeed conscious but modest in their consciousness. A modest awareness and a modest appearance of that beauty.
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