‘Where’s the outcry?’

‘Did you mean me to make one!’

‘What could you do but vindicate your sex?’

‘Then you would not have thought me in earnest.’

He made a funny pleased face and a little bow.

‘The truth was,’ said Violet, ‘I was thinking whether I understood you.’

‘May I ask your conclusion?’

‘I don’t exactly know. I don’t think you meant we should never talk of what interests us.’

‘When they know when to hold their tongues, perhaps I should have said.’

‘O, yes, that I quite think.’