"What you say is," he returned, staring straight ahead of him, "that I can't possibly know what you really are, at all; but you know so well what I am that you can tell me exactly what my own thoughts and feelings are."
"Oh, no, I didn't mean—"
"That's precisely what you do mean. I'm so plainly labelled 'worthless' that you don't have to stop to examine me. You—"
"I didn't—"
"I beg your pardon. I can tell you exactly what you think of me: A young fool who runs after the latest sensation, to drop it when he finds a newer one. His head turned by every pretty girl—to whom he says just the sort of thing he has said to you to-night. Superficial and ordinary, incapable of serious thought on any of the subjects that interest you. As for this business affair in Eastman—that's just a caprice, a game to be dropped when he tires of it. Everything in life will be like that to him, including his very friends. Come, now—isn't that what you've been thinking? There's no use denying it. Nearly every time I've seen you you've said some little thing that has shown me your opinion of me. I won't say there haven't been times in my life when I may have deserved it, but on my honour I don't think I deserve it now."
"Then I won't think it," said Roberta promptly, looking up. "I truly don't want to do you an injustice. But you are so different from the other men I have known—my brothers, my friends—that I can hardly imagine your seeing things from my point of view—"
"But you can see things from mine without any difficulty!"
"It isn't fair, is it?" Her tone was that of the comrade, now. "But you know women are credited with a sort of instinct—even intuition—that leads them safely where men's reasoning can't always follow."
"It never leads them astray, by any chance?"
"Yes, I think it does sometimes," she owned frankly. "But it's as well for the woman to be on her guard, isn't it? Because, sometimes, you know, she loses her head. And when that happens—"