She did not reply, and so he asked: “Why shouldn’t you be willing to be helped by your friends?”
“Well—one sometimes isn’t,” she said defensively.
All at once he felt the pathetic helplessness behind her masquerade of independence. And, moved by an odd impulse, he wanted to make her admit the truth to him.
“Is it just because it’s Clive?” he asked.
For a moment she looked at him coldly as if about to rebuke his presumption, and then looked down and said: “I suppose so....”
“I thought you were in love with him,” he said bluntly.
She laughed.
“But aren’t you?” he insisted.
“What a question!” she retorted. “Are I or aren’t I? You talk like my mother!... How do I know?”
“And you talk like Clive!” he said.