"You're not. You're in love with me." Harry was overbearing in his confidence. His face had not lost its beaming affection and good nature, but the power to charm her was vanished. "And so you think of marriage. Well, there's no question of that, because I know something about myself and about you. It wouldn't last. How could it? Love's a rapture."
"We don't mean the same thing," replied Patricia, steadily, meeting his eyes frankly, and with defiance. The coldness which had possessed her on the previous evening was reinforced by a pride that was insane in its egotism.
"When people say 'Love and Marriage' they're not thinking of us. Marriage belongs to the days of women's economic dependence," he asserted.
"It belongs to the idea of constancy."
"When a woman was economically dependent," pursued Harry, ignoring the interruption, "she said 'what will you give for my love? Will you support me for life?' That's altered now. She gives love for love."
"And when she's broken?" Patricia's anger began to manifest itself. "Do you think other men think as you do? I mean, when they're offered something soiled?"
"Soiled?" Harry's astonishment was marked. "That doesn't arise."
Patricia controlled herself.
"To me it does," she said, gravely. "Not to you."