I tried to gain time. "It would depend on the motive."
"We'll assume the motive to be nothing but pure friendship, just the desire that you should have every opportunity to make good again, and nothing else. Absolutely nothing else! Do you understand? Would you take it from him then? Please tell me as frankly as if—"
"I—I might."
"And because I'm not a man but a woman, you can't."
"It isn't the same thing."
"Which is just what we women complain of, just what we fight against, the stupid conventions that force us into being useless in a world—"
"Oh, but there are other ways of being useful."
"No other way of being useful compensates for the one which seems to you paramount, above all others, and from which you are debarred."
"But why should it? You and I never met till—"
"You can't argue that way. You can't reason about the thing at all. I'm not reasoning, further than to say that—that I believe in you, in your power of—of coming back. That's the phrase, isn't it? And as, apparently, I'm the only one in a position to go to your aid—"