"I don't want to look at them. I didn't think it would be like that. I'm not used to it. I've never been to a Gymnasium in my life before."
"You ought to come. You should join us, Miss Usher. Why don't you?"
"Thank you, Mr. Ransome, I'd rather not. I don't see myself!"
He didn't see her either. Some of his innocence had gone. She had taken it away from him. He was beginning to understand how Winny's performance had struck her. It was magnificent, but it was not a thing that could be done by a nice woman, by a woman who respected herself and her own womanhood and her own beauty; not a thing that could be done by Violet Usher. He was not sure that in her view it was consistent with propriety, with reticence, with a perfect purity. And he began to wonder whether his own view of it had not been a little shameless.
He rushed, for sheer decency, into a stuttering defense.
"Well, but—well, but—but it's all right, don't you know?"
"It's all right for men. They're different. But—"
"Not right for women?"
"If you reelly want to know—no. I don't think it is. It isn't pretty, for one thing."
"Oh, I say—how about Winny?"