Anna was looking at him coldly. “You sufficiently describe her in saying that!”
“Yes, if you measure her by conventional standards—which is what you always declare you never do.”
“Conventional standards? A girl who——” She was checked by a sudden rush of almost physical repugnance. Suddenly she broke out: “I always thought her an adventuress!”
“Always?”
“I don’t mean always ... but after you came...”
“She’s not an adventuress.”
“You mean that she professes to act on the new theories? The stuff that awful women rave about on platforms?”
“Oh, I don’t think she pretended to have a theory——”
“She hadn’t even that excuse?”
“She had the excuse of her loneliness, her unhappiness—of miseries and humiliations that a woman like you can’t even guess. She had nothing to look back to but indifference or unkindness—nothing to look forward to but anxiety. She saw I was sorry for her and it touched her. She made too much of it—she exaggerated it. I ought to have seen the danger, but I didn’t. There’s no possible excuse for what I did.”