"Well," he admitted mildly, "do you think it very right yourself."
She straightened her shoulders, lifting her chin, and her grip tightened on the back of the chair.
"It's not a question of what I do or don't think right," she said with sudden fierceness; "it's a question of what a woman's got to be and to put up with out here if she's tolerably good looking. You think we're just silly fools, who laugh and chatter and let men make love to us. You don't know that it's just to keep things pleasant, and prevent rows for one's husband in little places like Sar, where every one's jumbled together, that one does laugh, and chatter, and pretend not to see things, and seem to like things that one hates. You suppose, because we don't make a fuss, that we're frivolous and empty-headed, and don't think for a moment what a time you'd have of it if we went in for being anything else."
"No," said Terrington doubtfully; "I don't suppose we do."
He was perplexed by her revelation, never imagining that it came of a desire for his good opinion, and resenting her careless sacrifice of another man's secret. He knew nothing about women, nor how little they counted a loss of honour from the sacrifice of anything in what could be considered an excusing cause.
So that he was quite unprepared when, with her elbow propped upon the chair, and turning her back upon his vague admission, she said in a voice uncontrollably unsteady.
"Oh, I know what you think of me!"
Terrington, who neither knew what he thought of her nor what she thought he thought of her, held his tongue, and Rose, with her back still towards him, and after a sniff at the opposite hills, continued less precariously:
"Do you think it's impossible for a woman to change?"
"Oh, surely," he protested, smiling; "that's never been urged against her."