"No, I don't mean that. The thought that there could be anything in the least discreditable in the friendship between Smallwood and you never once crossed my mind. I know, of course, that it is perfectly honest and above-board. Don't please, put my attitude down to mere jealousy. I'm not in the least jealous."
What surprised him more than anything else in this amazing chain of circumstances, was that he was sitting there talking to her so calmly and deliberately, almost as if he were arguing an abstruse point in a court of law! Of this new cold self that was suddenly to the front he had had no former experience. And certainly it was true to say that at that moment there was not in him an atom of jealousy.
She seemed to shrivel up beneath the coldness of his argument. She said, doggedly: "I'm not going to give way, Kenneth."
They both looked at each other then, quite calmly and subconsciously a little awed, as if they could see suddenly the brink on which they were standing.
"Helen, I don't want to domineer over you at all. I want you to be as free to do what you like as I am. But there are some things, which, for my sake and for the sake of the position I hold here, you ought not to do. And having Smallwood here alone when I am away is one of those things."
"I don't agree. I have as much right to make a friend of Smallwood as you have to make a friend of—say Clare!"
The mention of Clare shifted him swiftly out of his cool, calculating mood and back into the mood which had possessed him when he first came into the room. "Not at all," he replied, sharply. "The cases are totally different. Smallwood is a boy—a boy in my House. That makes all the difference."
"I don't see that it makes any difference."
"Good heavens, Helen!—You don't see? Don't you realise the sort of talk that is getting about? Doesn't it occur to you that Smallwood will chatter about this all over the school and make out that he's conducting a clandestine flirtation with you? Don't you see how it will undermine all the discipline of the House—will make people laugh at me when my back's turned—will—"
"And I'm to give up my freedom just to stop people from laughing at you, am I?"