"Stop, Jeff, you're brutal. I won't listen."
"You've got to. I've listened to you. Now you must listen to me, and I'm going to make you play the game with your cards above the table. So far as I can understand, you hold the New York record for broken hearts to date, and I was warned that you had strewn your wrecks along the whole front of Central Park East. But I suppose I was too much flattered when you showed me attention to take to my heels. I liked you and I wanted you to like me. Perhaps we both liked each other for the same reason—with the same motive—curiosity. You put me in odd situations just to see what I'd do. I liked to be with you. You purred like a kitten in the sun, and I liked to hear you, so I was willing to perform for that privilege. You claimed me for a friend, but you tried your best to make me lose my head. That's true, you can't deny it. I didn't lose it, because—well, because I had made up my mind that I wouldn't. I don't know whether you were disappointed or not, but I know you were surprised, because you weren't in the habit of missing a trick when you played that game."
She withdrew her hand abruptly and turned her head away. "That isn't true," she murmured. "You must not speak to me so."
"I've got to. Every word of what I say is true—and you know it."
"It's not true now."
"Yes, it's true now. I know how much you really care about me. You've got so much in life that you're never really interested in anything except the things you can't get. You like me because you know I'm out of your reach and you can't have me even if I wanted you to. You're a great artist, but I don't think you really ever fooled me much. You like to run with a fast and Frenchy set just because it gives your cleverness a chance it couldn't have with the Dodos, but you don't mind being talked about, because your conscience is clear; you like the excitement of running into danger just to prove your cleverness in getting out of it. See here, Rita, this time you're going too far. I suppose I ought to feel very proud of the faith you put in me and your willingness to trust yourself so completely in my hands. I guess I do. But things are different with me somehow. I told you I was going to Hell pretty fast, and I'm not in a mood to be trifled with."
"I'm not trifling." She had caught a sinister note in his voice and looked up at him in alarm.
"There's a way to prove that."
"How?"
"This!"