When he replied there was a faint note of excitement in his voice. It was pitched a little lower and he spoke more quickly. In the darkness she could not see him, and yet she was sharply conscious of the change.
“I’ll tell you, then,” he was saying, “I’ve been seeing a great deal of Sybil in the hope that I should see a little of her mother.”
She did not answer him. She simply sat there, speechless, overcome by confusion, as if she had been a young girl with her first lover. She was even made a little dizzy by the sound of his voice.
“I have offended you. I’m sorry. I only spoke the truth. There is no harm in that.”
With a heroic effort to speak intelligently, she succeeded in saying, “No, I am not offended.” (It all seemed such a silly, helpless, pleasant feeling.) “No, I’m not offended. I don’t know....”
Of only one thing was she certain; that this strange, dizzy, intoxicated state was like nothing she had ever experienced. It was sinister and overwhelming in a bitter-sweet fashion. She kept thinking, “I can begin to understand how a young girl can be seduced, how she cannot know what she is doing.”
“I suppose,” he was saying, “that you think me presumptuous.”
“No, I only think everything is impossible, insane.”
“You think me a kind of ruffian, a bum, an Irishman, a Roman Catholic, some one you have never heard of.” He waited, and then added: “I am all that, from one point of view.”
“No, I don’t think that; I don’t think that.”