"It isn't fair on us. It isn't fair."
"It isn't fair on me," she said. "I'm jumpy when I'm kept back. You don't know what it's like, Jimmy. Don't turn me back."
And the poor child began to talk about her duty to the wounded, and that made him burst out again.
"The wounded? If you think you're any more comfort to the wounded than you are to Furny and me I can tell you you're mistaken. There was a poor devil at Lokeren the other day with a bullet in his stomach who told me he didn't mind his wounds and he didn't mind the Germans; what worried him was the lady being there when he wasn't able to defend her."
She tilted her chin at that and said she didn't want anybody to defend her.
"Perhaps you don't, but what would you think of a man who didn't want to defend you? What would you think of Furny and me if we wanted you to be here?"
"I should like you to want me," she said.
"No, my dear child, you wouldn't. You don't know what you're saying."
And then he said, "I know better than you do what you want. Men aren't made like that—if they are men. You can't have it both ways." And he said something about chivalry that drove her back in sheer self-defence on a Feminist line. She said that nowadays women had chivalry too.
"And our chivalry is to go down before yours?"