“If other women can do that sort of thing, why can't I, Clay?”
“Nonsense.”
“But why? I'm intelligent.”
“It's not work for a lady.”
“Lady! How old-fashioned you are! There are no ladies any more. Just women. And if we aren't measured by our usefulness instead of our general not-worth-a-damn-ness, well, we ought to be. Oh, I've had time to think, lately.”
He was hardly listening. Seeing her, after all those weeks, had brought him a wonderful feeling of peace. The little room, with its fire, was cozy and inviting. But he was quite sure, looking down at her, that he was not in danger of falling in love with her. There was no riot in him, no faint stirring of the emotions of that hour with the mauve book.
There was no suspicion in him that the ways of love change with the years, that the passions of the forties, when they come, are to those of the early years as the deep sea to a shallow lake, less easily roused, infinitely more terrible.
“This girl you spoke about, that was the business you mentioned?”
“Yes.” She hesitated. “I could have asked you that over the telephone, couldn't I? The plain truth is that I've had two bad months—never mind why, and Christmas was coming, and—I just wanted to see your perfectly sane and normal face again.”
“I wish you'd let me know sooner where you were.”