No comment.
"You don't believe it?"
"Do you?" A pause. "Why ask these questions you've already answered yourself?"
"I'll tell you why," replied she, her face suddenly flushed with earnestness. "Because I want you to help me. You help everyone else. Why not me?"
"You never asked me," said he.
"I didn't know I wanted it until just now—as I said it. But YOU must have known, because you are so much more experienced than I—and understand people—what's going on in their minds, deeper than they can see." Her tone became indignant, reproachful. "Yes, you must have known I needed your help. And you ought to have helped me, even if you did dislike me. You've no right to dislike anyone as young as I."
He was looking at her now, the intensely alive blue eyes sympathetic, penetrating, understanding. It was frightful to be so thoroughly understood—all one's weaknesses laid bare—yet it was a relief and a joy, too—like the cruel healing knife of the surgeon. Said he:
"I do not like kept women."
She gasped, grew ghastly. It was a frightful insult, one for which she was wholly unprepared. "You—believe—that?" she said slowly.
"Another of those questions," he said. And he looked calmly away, out over the sea, as if his interest in the conversation were at an end.