He couldn't believe she could be so absolutely calm: the after-wash of that impulse had been so strong in him that it was as if he had tried to catch her to him and had been foiled by her. . . . She ought to be indignant, amused, even pleased. . . . She ought to show some emotion. . . .
She said:
"It was your silencing me with that absurd non-sequitur about the Pimlico clothing factory. It was an insult to my intelligence."
"You recognised that it was a fallacy!" Tietjens said. He was looking hard at her. He didn't know what had happened to him. She took a long look at him, cool, but with immense eyes. It was as if for a moment destiny, which usually let him creep past somehow, had looked at him. "Can't," he argued with destiny, "a man want to kiss a schoolgirl in a scuffle. . . ." His own voice, a caricature of his own voice, seemed to come to him: "Gentlemen don't . . ." He exclaimed:
"Don't gentlemen? . . ." and then stopped because he realised that he had spoken aloud.
She said:
"Oh, gentlemen do!" she said, "use fallacies to glide over tight places in arguments. And they browbeat schoolgirls with them. It's that, that underneath, has been exasperating me with you. You regarded me at that date—three-quarters of a day ago—as a schoolgirl."
Tietjens said:
"I don't now!" He added: "Heaven knows I don't now!"
She said: "No; you don't now!"