"No, you're not. How I hate the construction you put on things! In your eyes, nothing is pure or disinterested. You can't even imagine to yourself a friendship between a man and a woman. Such a thing isn't known here—in your nation of artists. Your men are too inflammatory, and too self-sufficient, to want their calves fatted for any but the one sacrifice. Girls have their very kitchen-aprons tied on them with an undermeaning. And poor souls, who can blame them for submitting! What a fate is theirs, if they don't manage to catch a man! Gossip and needlework are only slow poison."
"Now you're spiteful. But I'll tell YOU something. Such friendships as you speak of are only possible where the woman is old—or ugly—or abnormal, in some way: a man-woman, or a clever woman, or some other freak of nature. Now, our women are, as a rule, sexually healthy. They know what they're here for, too, and are not ashamed of it. Also, they still have their share of physical attraction. While yours—good God! I wonder you manage to keep the breed going!"
"Stop, Heinz!" said Madeleine sternly. "You are illogical, and indecent; and you know there's a limit I don't choose to let you pass.—You're wrong, too. You've only to look about you, here, with unbiassed eyes, to see which race the prettiest girls belong to.—But never mind! You only launch out in this way that you may not be obliged to discuss Maurice Guest. I know you. I can read you like a book."
"You are not very old ... or ugly ... or abnormal, Mada."
She smiled in spite of herself. "And are we not friends, pray?"
"Something that way.—But in all you say about Guest, the impersonal note is wanting. You're jealous."
"I'm nothing of the sort!—But you'll at least allow me to resent seeing a friend of mine in the claws of this ... this vampire?"
Krafft laughed. "Vampire is good!—A poor, distraught—"
"Spare your phrases, Heinz. She's bad through and through, and stupid into the bargain."
"Lulu stupid? EI, EI, Mada! Your eyes are indeed askew. She has a touch of the other extreme—of genius."