"Oh, lots of things." She looked about the room as if not attaching much importance to her words. "Love, for one."
"But in this case love has to be counted out."
"Can you ever count out love? I thought that was the one permanent factor in existence, though the skies were to fall."
"It may be a permanent factor, and yet have to remain in abeyance."
She laughed.
"Nonsense! Who ever heard of love remaining in abeyance? You might as well talk of fire remaining in abeyance when it's raging, or water when it's bursting a dam, or any other element in active operation. If I loved any one, no matter how little, I should want to save them from a man like Colonel Stroud."
"In spite of the fact that you'd been considered guilty of—"
"Oh, what does it matter what any one thinks of so poor a thing as oneself? I mean that oneself to oneself is so very unimportant."
"Oh, do you think so?"
"Of course I know that there are other points of view, and that from some of them oneself to oneself is the most vital of all considerations. But in the detail of what other people think of one—"