"I don't undertake it," said Pen. "You can't help seeing what you see."
"I could put it through," he said again, "if there was sufficient incentive."
"Of course," said Pen. And let the matter drop.
He was trying to make her beg for the railway. What most fascinated and provoked him in her was his inability to make her ask him for anything, or take anything from him. Everybody else in the world asked him for things one way or another.
He presently went on: "That's the trouble with life to a man like me: I have no particular incentive to do anything."
Pen refused to recognize his money. "Why haven't you the same incentive as other men?" she demanded to know.
"What are men's principal incentives?" he parried.
"Well, love, ambition, the desire to excel other men, I suppose."
"Yes, one could go far for love," he said with a sidelong look.
Pen without looking at him was aware of the look. She thought: "Men are funny! He's trying to make me philander with him in a crude way, and if I did he'd weary of me immediately!"