"May I call your attention to the fact that there is such a thing, between men and women, as intellectual relations?" She was getting angry, and her anger betrayed her self-consciousness.
"You compel me," he retorted, "to remind you that there are other relations between men and women which are not markedly intellectual."
"There're none of that kind in mine, thank you! I—"
But he interrupted her, dryly: "Of course you know you had no business to do it. You remind me, Fred, of one of those dirty little boys who put a firecracker under your chair to make you jump. Look here, it's unworthy of a 'business woman' to do unconventional things simply because they are unconventional."
"I didn't!"
"You are like all the rest of your sex—self-conscious as hens when they see an automobile coming! You knew it was queer to shut yourself up there with that darned fool, Maitland, and that's why you loved doing it," he flung at her. "That's the trouble with women nowadays; not that they do unusual things, but they are so blamed pleased to be unusual! And if they only knew it, they don't shock a man at all. They only bore him to death."
"I—"
"But I suppose you can't help it; you are so atrociously young," he ended, sighing.
Frederica was almost too angry to speak. "I am old enough to do as I choose!"
"Only Youth does as it chooses," he told her. "Reflect upon what I have said, my dear infant, and profit by it.... Stop at the iron dog!" he called to the driver. And the next minute Frederica, buffeted by the high, keen wind, ran past the dog, whose back was ridged with grimy snow, and, holding on to her hat with one hand, let herself into the hall with her latch-key.