"Jenny, Jenny," pleaded Maurice, relaxing the closeness of his embrace. "Don't play at love any more. Think what a mistake, what a wicked mistake it is to let so much of our time go by. Don't drive me mad with impatience. You foolish little girl, can't you understand what a muddle you're making of life?"
"I want to wait till I'm twenty-one," she said.
It meant nothing to her, this date; but Maurice, accepting it as an actual pledge of surrender, could only rail against her unreasonableness.
"Good heavens! What for? You are without exception the most amazing creature. Twenty-one! Why twenty-one? Why not fifty-one? Most of all, why not now?"
"I can't. Not now. Not when I've just left home. I should feel a sneak. Don't ask me to, Maurice. If you love me, as you say you do, you'll wait a little while quite happy."
"But don't you want to give yourself to me?"
"I do, and then again I don't. Sometimes I think I will, and then sometimes I think I don't want to give myself to any man."
"You don't love me."
"Yes, I do. I do. Only I hate men. I always have. I can't explain more than what I've told you. If you can't understand, you can't. It's because you don't know girls."
"Don't know girls," he repeated, staggered by the assertion. "Of course I understand your point of view, but I think it's stupid and irrational and dangerous—yes—dangerous.... Don't know girls? I wish I didn't."