“Because it implies that I'm made of such soft material the slightest breeze will mess me all up. I'm not so like that as I evidently appear; and if it's true that we're afraid other people will do the things we'd be most likely to do ourselves, it seems to me that I ought to be the one to be afraid. I ought to be afraid that somebody may say something about me to you that will make you believe I'm a professional forger.”
“No. We both know they won't,” she said. “We both know you're the sort of person everybody in the world says nice things about.” She lifted her hand to silence him as he laughed at this. “Oh, of course you are! I think perhaps you're a little flirtatious—most quiet men have that one sly way with 'em—oh, yes, they do! But you happen to be the kind of man everybody loves to praise. And if you weren't, I shouldn't hear anything terrible about you. I told you I was unpopular: I don't see anybody at all any more. The only man except you who's been to see me in a month is that fearful little fat Frank Dowling, and I sent word to HIM I wasn't home. Nobody'd tell me of your wickedness, you see.”
“Then let me break some news to you,” Russell said. “Nobody would tell me of yours, either. Nobody's even mentioned you to me.”
She burlesqued a cry of anguish. “That IS obscurity! I suppose I'm too apt to forget that they say the population's about half a million nowadays. There ARE other people to talk about, you feel, then?”
“None that I want to,” he said. “But I should think the size of the place might relieve your mind of what seems to insist on burdening it. Besides, I'd rather you thought me a better man than you do.”
“What kind of a man do I think you are?”
“The kind affected by what's said about people instead of by what they do themselves.”
“Aren't you?”
“No, I'm not,” he said. “If you want our summer evenings to be over you'll have to drive me away yourself.”
“Nobody else could?”