"You thought her many virtues might have an improving effect on me, I suppose?"
The acorn was no longer veiled: and he winced under it.
"No: only is occurred to me that the two . . . . best women I have ever known might reasonably have a good deal in common."
"It is kind of you to couple me with her. I am flattered, I assure you!—But, personally, I prefer something lees exalted, something more human, more fallible. . . ."
"Perhaps that explains your predilection for Garth?" he broke in abruptly, pricked to resentment by her persistent note of mockery.
"I am not aware that my friendship with Major Garth requires any sort of explanation."
She was rigid now—face, voice, figure: his golden opportunity gone past recall. Men pay as dearly for sins of ignorance as for the baser kinds of trespass: and the man who does not understand women is almost worse, in their esteem, that the man who treats them ill.
"Is it wise—for your own sake . . . to be so careless of your good name?" he persisted desperately; goaded by the knowledge that he would not soon get speech of her again.
"Possibly not. But I don't feel called upon to retire into a convent, or to advertise the fact that I am not . . . 'on the market.' Nor do I choose to have my conduct called in question by any man living."
She faced him now;—defiant, a bright spot on either cheek.