"Well, just the same," with feminine subjectiveness, "I mean to make my way as an individual first and a woman second. I give nothing to you men and I ask nothing except a fighting chance. I don't believe in all this pay-the-price business. I don't recognize you as the arbiters of my destiny. I'll pay my price with my ability, and if I can't pay up that way then I deserve to fail. Women can fight back at the world with something besides their sex. I intend to prove it."
He closed tighter over her arm.
"I like you when you tilt at windmills, Miss Don Quixote, and I like the way your eyes turn black."
"There you are at it again."
"Certainly; it's the law of life."
"You mean it's the law of men! Why should you set the price of our success? We women are going to batter down the monopoly."
"You're a regular little holy terror for woman's rights. Come in here for a drink and tell me about it."
They were approaching the rapids of Broadway, the quickened torrent of the pleasure zone that leaps high in folly even under sunlight. Sidewalk humanity quickened and had a shove to it. Street cars and cabs plunged in seemingly impassable directions. Frivolity was showing her naked shoulder on lithograph roof garden and matinée stage. The Times Building stood like a colossus, breakwater to the tide. Rector's invited.
"Come in for a drink," he repeated.
She threw him a northwest glance with what for her amounted to quite an adventure in coquetry.