"According to you, then, fidelity is impossible to a man."
"Certainly not; however, it's not love that keeps him faithful, but other things, a sense of honour, pride in his family, and possibly a feeling of compassion."
"What damned nonsense!"
"Colonel Graeme?"
"So it is. You sit there, knowing nothing at all about it, and reel off yards of cheap clap-trap cynicism picked up from rotten, morbid books. Lord, talk of my reading doing me harm!"
"My views are not gathered from books, but observation. I know what I say is true."
"And may I ask how, if you do, you can contemplate the idea of marrying one of us brutes, as you told me the other day you did eventually?"
"Because I'm human, like everyone else, and when the time comes, as it unfortunately must, I suppose, I shall be like any other woman, or like—like you. I shall recant all I've said, and believe in undying love and the rest of it. I can see now; then I shan't be able."
"Sure you can see now?
"Quite sure, Colonel Graeme, absolutely, perfectly sure," she added, somewhat unnecessarily meeting his eyes.