'Your inability to read.'
'That is the kindest remark I have heard for a long time!' exclaimed Wilfrid with a good-natured laugh.
'Very likely it is, though you don't mean it. When you read, you only poison your mind. It is your reading that has made you what you are, without faith, without feeling. You dissect everything, you calculate motives cynically, you have learnt to despise everyone who believes what you refuse to, you make your own intellect the centre of the world. You are dangerous.'
'What a character! To whom am I dangerous?'
'To anyone whom it pleases you to tempt, in whom you find the beginnings of disbelief.'
'In brief, I have no principles?'
'Of course you have none.'
'In other words, I am selfish?'
'Intensely so.'
It was hard to discover whether she were in earnest. Wilfrid examined her for a moment, and concluded that she must be. Her eyes were gleaming with no mock seriousness, and there was even a slight quiver about her lips. In all their exchanges of banter he had never known her look and speak quite as she did now. As he regarded her there came a flush to her cheek. She turned her head away and rode on.