“That was before dinner,” she answered, glancing sideways at him. “I feel braver now.”
“You are prepared,” he remarked, “for unconditional surrender?”
She looked at him again. She had rather nice eyes, quite dark and very soft, and she was a great believer in their efficacy.
“Of my argument?”
He did not answer her for a moment. He had turned his head slightly towards her, and though his face was, as usual, expressionless, and his eyes cold and hard, she found nevertheless something of meaning in his steady regard. There was a flush in her cheek when she looked away.
“I am afraid,” she remarked, “that you are rather a terrible person.”
“You flatter me,” he murmured. “I am really quite harmless!”
“Not from conviction then, I am sure,” she remarked.
“Perhaps not,” he admitted. “Let us call it from lack of enterprise! The virtues are all very admirable things, but it is the men and women with vices who have ruled the world. The good die young because there is no useful work for them to do. No really satisfactory person, from a moral point of view, ever achieved greatness!”
She half closed her eyes.