He turned and looked steadily into her angry eyes. Her quick breath spread the starlight to a vague and smoky blueness among the gleaming sequins on her breast. "Yes," he said, "that is probably what I do mean. First or last, whatever you may call her, it's the woman's self that counts."
She remained for a moment with her eyes still passionately alight, and something visible even in the dusk upon her face which she would and would not say. Then her mouth hardened, and she flung herself back in her chair.
"I hate you," she cried.
"No," he said with a sigh; "you hate the fact. Every woman does whom it doesn't profit."
There was nothing said between them for some minutes, and Caragh could hear the silk ripple as her foot swung to and fro among the ruchings of her skirt. The sound brought back another silence, when she had sat beside him on an English summer evening in a dusk almost as deep; brought back the hour from that scented night when, with the spells of strangeness still upon her charm, he had listened to her ankles' silken whisper, and felt in the dark the unendurable sweetness of her presence rob his life of its desires.
He was carried so far by the memory that the change in her voice startled him when she spoke again.
"What did you tell her about me," she demanded.
"I didn't tell her anything," he said.
"She hasn't asked about your past?"
"Not yet."