"That is not an answer to my question; I was not dealing in generalities when I asked it. But of course, you have every right to withhold the answer, if it pleases you—"
"I don't think I know the answer," said Katharine. "I have always found your questions too difficult to answer; and as to this one,—I wish I could be sure that it was a friend at all." He moved his chair, involuntarily, a little nearer hers.
"Can I do anything to make you feel more sure?" he asked.
She shook her head, and he moved away again. "Of course, you are the best judge in the matter," he resumed, more naturally; "but it is rather a serious step to take at the outset of your career, is it not?"
"Perhaps," she said, indifferently; "but then, I am not a man, you see. There is no career possible for a woman, because her feelings are always more important to her than all the ambition in the world. A man only draws on his feelings for his recreation; but a woman makes them the whole business of her life, and that is why she never gets on. I don't suppose you can realise this, because it is so different for you. Everybody expects a man to get on; it is made comparatively easy for him, and nobody ever disputes his way of doing it. A man can have as much fun as he likes, as long as he isn't found out,—and it's easy for a man not to be found out," she added, with a sigh.
"Easier than for a woman?" He spoke in the bantering tone that was so familiar to her.
"Oh, a woman is dogged by detectives from her cradle, mostly drawn from the ranks of her own sex. It is a compliment we pay ourselves, in one sense. We dare not inquire into the private life of a man, because of the iniquities he is supposed to practise; but there is so little scandal attached to a woman's name, that we are anxious not to miss any of it." She laughed at her small attempt to be frivolous, and Paul brightened considerably. He could understand her when she was in this mood, and his peace of mind was undisturbed by it.
"I suppose the man is still unborn who will take the trouble to champion his sex, and explain that men are not all profligates before they are married," he observed. "I wonder why women always think of us as cads, and then take us for husbands. I can't think why they want to marry us at all, though."
"And we can't think what reason there is for you to offer us marriage, unless you do it for position or something like that," retorted Katharine, and then bit her lip and stopped short, as she realised what she had said. In the embarrassing pause that followed, Marion came back into the room.
"Well, you two don't look as though you'd had much conversation," she remarked.