"Why go into that?" rejoined he, with an intonation that gave her a chance to be flattered, if she chose. "Of course, if I had decided I needed you in my career, I'd have flung myself over ears into love. As it was, don't you think my keeping away from you complimentary?"
This was the nearest he had ever come to an admission that she was attractive to him; she straightway exaggerated it into a declaration of love. Very few women make or even understand a man's clear distinction between physical attraction and love; Amy thought them one and the same.
"You are so hard!" said she. "I wonder at myself for liking you." As she spoke, she rapidly thought it out with the aid of her vanity; men and women, in their relations with each other, always end by taking counsel of vanity. He wanted her; he had taken this subtle means to get within her defenses and, without running the risk of a refusal, find out whether he could get her, whether a woman of her wealth and position would condescend to him. It was with her sweetest, candidest smile that she went on, "Now it is all settled. You don't want to marry me; you aren't in love with me. I need not be afraid of any designs, mercenary or otherwise. At last, we can be real friends."
He reflected, then said with a judicial, impersonal air, "No matter how well a man plays the game of man and man, he usually plays the game of man and woman badly. Why? Because he thinks the conditions are different. He is deceived by woman's air of guilelessness into imagining he has the game all his own way."
"What has that got to do with what I said to you?" asked she, her color a confession that the question was unnecessary.
He again laughed at her with his eyes. "Why did you think it had?"
She pouted. "You are in a horrible mood to-day."
He rose. "Thanks for the hint."
She began to unroll the plans.
"Now, there's the man for you," said he, with a gesture toward her bundle of blue prints.