'N—no. I don't think I want you to go.'
'Oh, yes, you do. I knew you'd make me sooner or later.'
'No, don't be afraid.' She stood up.
'I'm not afraid. I'm eager,' he laughed.
She shook her head. 'No, I'll never take you.'
'Why not?'
'Because—it isn't all Ernestine and skittles. And because you'd make me keenly alive again to all sorts of things that I see now don't matter—things that have lost some of their power to trouble me, but that I should feel for you.'
'What sort of——'
'Oh, oddities, uglinesses—things that abound, I'm told, at all men's meetings, and that yet, somehow, we'd like to eliminate from women's quite on the old angel theory. No, I won't take you!'