"I know perfectly well that this isn't right, she said, helping him and then herself: but I am wondering what there is about it that isn't right"

Gibson draws a man and woman breakfasting alone together—an unmarried couple, the caption implies, sharing a morning meal in her domestic quarters. The man, in a loose smock or robe, leans back in his carved chair with proprietary ease; the woman, hair pinned in a fashionable Gibson-era chignon, bends attentively over the table, pouring or serving. The floral tablecloth, shuttered window, and chaise longue in the background all signal a private, unchaperoned interior. The caption's arch logic—she knows it is improper yet cannot articulate why—is the joke: progressive New Woman rationalism undercutting Victorian sexual convention. Gibson sympathizes more than he condemns, making the woman's puzzlement charming rather than scandalous.