"Jinny," he said at last, "I'm going to talk truth to you." Again he paused. "Because I don't think anybody else will."
"There are things," he said, "that are necessary to women like Mrs. Levine and Mrs. Heron, that are not necessary to you. You have moments when your need of these things is such that you think life isn't worth living unless you get them. Those moments are bound to come, because you're human. But they pass. They pass. Especially if you don't attend to them. The real, permanent, indestructible thing in you is the need, the craving, the impulse to create Hamblebys. It can't pass. You know that. What you won't admit is that you're mistaking the temporary, passing impulse for a permanent one. No woman will tell you that it's temporary. They'll all take the sentimental view of it, as you do. Because, Jinny, the devilish thing about it is that, when this folly falls upon a woman, she thinks it's a divine folly."
He looked at her again with the penetrating eyes that saw everything.
"It may be," he said. "It may be. But the chances are it isn't."
"Tanks," she said, "you're very hard on me."
"That's just what I'm not. I'm tenderer to you than you are yourself."
It was hard to take in, the idea of his tenderness to her.
"Think—think, before you're drawn in."
"I am thinking," she said.
Tanqueray's voice insisted. "It's easy to get in; but it isn't so jolly easy to get out."