"I think you've punished me enough," he said.
"Then you admit that you deserve to be punished?"
"Perhaps."
"Which means that you did believe I took your chair on purpose."
"I didn't stop to think," said Loveland, telling the truth as usual, but less truculently than usual.
"You are English, aren't you?" the girl asked, looking at him with her brown, bewildering eyes.
"Oh yes," replied Loveland, in a tone which added "Of course." But he would have realised now, if he had not been sure before, that the girl was genuinely ignorant of his important identity.
"I was sure you were. I suppose you don't understand American girls very well, or perhaps any girls yet. But then few men do, really. Except poets or novelists. And you're not a poet or a novelist?"
"Rather not!"
"You speak as though I'd asked if you were a pick-pocket. Do you despise writers?"