“O!” she said; “it was only a try, but a pretty forlorn one. You are satisfied with virtue for its own sake, aren’t you? The worse for the girls, for you are a jolly good-looking fellow.”
“Am I, my dear?” he said drily. He used the term without design. It was simply an involuntary expression of his estimate of her value, and she recognized it as such.
“I’m not in the least offended,” she answered. “I meant to pay you back a trifle of what I owed you, that was all; and you’re quite right to refuse to compromise with a penny in the pound. What does it feel like to respect yourself? I wish you’d tell me.”
“I don’t know that I can,” he said. “I can only answer in a negative way by thinking what I should feel like if I didn’t.”
“Like what?”
“Like you, perhaps.”
“O!” she said, “you devil! But I don’t mind. It takes all sorts to make a world.”
She settled herself comfortably, putting out her little feet and crossing her ankles.
“Tell me,” she said, “what sort of a woman do you admire? That lady-clerk of yours?”
“I will answer again,” said Gilead, “negatively. I don’t admire you.”