"I don't know for sure," she said at last. "Sometimes I think so, and again I'm not so sure. I could tell better if he'd ask me. It isn't that I wouldn't like to. It's simply that I have qualms of conscience sometimes about wishing myself on a man like that. I'm so damned useless, Rod."
"I don't think that men as a rule love women and marry them on the basis of their usefulness," he returned. "I'm certain Andy wouldn't. I must say it's rather odd to see you taking that slant at it."
"Oh, yes," she drawled petulantly. "I suppose you've got me labelled fragile, too. Just because a fellow's been brought up gilt-edged and has acted accordingly, is she to be credited with neither heart nor conscience, nor even common sense? I have come to the conclusion that I don't want to be a canary in anybody's cage, Rod. When I size up some of the horrible examples of how not to do it in my own crowd, I get afraid. I'm twenty-six years old, Roderick. Does it never strike you that a girl like me doesn't play a lone hand so long without good reasons?"
"What's that got to do with Andy?" Rod inquired.
"I'll tell you in words of one syllable and maybe you'll get it," she retorted. "Some years ago, if you recall the occasion, I was very much in love with your own distinguished self. I hope," she smile impishly, "it doesn't embarrass you to be reminded. It doesn't me, because I still think my judgment was good, even if I was out of luck. I've been in love probably half a dozen times since. And I always drew back at what the novelists call the psychological moment. Why? God knows. I don't. Something lacking, I suppose. Perhaps in spite of my giddiness I had a hunch that being in love with love isn't quite the same as being in love with a person. Then the war took all the likely ones away, and a good many of the best of them didn't come back. And something has happened to those who did come back. They're either so keen on the make they daren't take a girl seriously, or—or they've gone bad; the bloom's off 'em. Not one of them looks good to me. Nor the life they live. I hope I don't sound preachy. But some people who are rotten with money—especially those who've made it so fast they haven't had time to grow up to it—are rotten with other things, too. I may look like what Andy calls a charming, innocent parasite. I like to think of myself as charming. My instincts at any rate are innocent. But I do object to the role of parasite. I don't want to be one. I've never done anything useful, even for myself, but that isn't saying I don't want to—even if it's no more than to comfort and pet some man and hearten him for whatever sort of job he has in hand. I've never worked, but that's no sign I wouldn't if I knew where to start in. I'm not lazy, nor am I too fastidious for workaday life. That's what it's got to do with Andy Hall. I like him. I'd hate to tell you just how much; you'd blush. And he likes me. I know that, although he's the best little sentiment-represser I've come across. He's afraid of me, or he's afraid of what I am. I mean I think he doesn't see me just as a woman but as part of and more or less inseparable from a certain background—a background he doesn't like and doesn't trust.
"You see," she went on more hurriedly, her voice becoming a little uncertain, her eyes turned steadfastly on the swirls and foaming overfalls the flood now made strongly in the rapids, "I get so infernally lonesome and discouraged sometimes. I'm tired of froth. I don't like the giddy pace most of 'em go. I don't want to be like Laska, soured on everything, so that she lives on cocktails and cigarettes and jazz. If she sits still long enough to think, she's apt to cry. If I don't find myself happy in the jazz age, Rod, at least I belong to it sufficiently not to be afraid or ashamed of my own thoughts and feelings and desires. I'm a normal female person. A woman can't escape the implication of a man, nor vice versa. Most of 'em go it blind. I'm not made that way. I don't know why, but it's a fact. Long ago I made up my mind that if I couldn't find the real thing in my own crowd, I'd go outside, just as you did."
"And then," she made a little gesture with her hands, "remember the day Andy showed Mrs. Hector Emmert his medals and made that passionate little speech that she said was sedition? Well, I warmed up to Andy Hall right then and there. Two years. I'm no nearer him now. He holds himself in. He won't let go. What can I do?"
"I'll tell you," Rod said impulsively. "Andy doesn't know you. You don't let go yourself."
"Fiddlesticks," she retorted. "Two years. I think I'm shamelessly transparent."
"Two years? I've known you more than ten," Rod countered. "I've learned more about you in ten minutes than I did in all the time before. So imagine his handicap. You're a rich man's daughter. You've had every social advantage. You belong to a class that taken by and large Andy Hall not only dislikes but despises for its stupidity and arrogance in so far as it deals with working people."