"No."
He urged her. "Please!"
"I couldn't, not at the same table where that dear old couple sit," she said quickly and glanced down the long table at the Mohrenheims.
"Tell me upstairs?"
She shook her head.
"I don't think I shall even upstairs. If, as I believe, the worst stories aren't true, it's wrong to repeat them."
"Why is it wrong to tell me and let me judge if I am to believe?"
But she wouldn't. "To repeat them gives them a false trueness," she said in that careful undertone. "Oh, I can't explain; but just to put them into words seems to spread a poison."
"You can't trust me to distinguish, to help you to distinguish?"
Again she shook her head. "What I have to think is, if some people, mistaken people, believed such things about us Americans, what would I say if I were asked whether I thought it a good thing that the false stories against us should be repeated? To make horrible pictures in people's brains; and, if the brains are weak, to turn them."