“Well! Isn’t that enough? Can’t you see how such an attitude must affect her character and development?”
“No, I can’t. To my mind it wouldn’t matter what the whole world thought. For good or ill, I stand for myself. What other people happened to think about me wouldn’t affect me one jot.”
I said loftily:—
“You are a man. Women are different. We do care. We are affected. That’s why it is so dreadfully important that we should be understood. I know it by experience. In different surroundings, with different people, I myself am two or three totally different women—”
He asked no questions, but looked at me, silent, expectant, and lured by that fatal love of talking about oneself which exists in so many feminine hearts, I fell into the trap, and prattled thoughtlessly on:—
“At home with my younger sister, I was the one who had all the responsibility and management. She depended on me. I was the Autocrat of the Household, and everything I said was law.”
“You would like that?”
I gave him a withering glance.
“Pray what makes you think so?”
“You like your own way, don’t you? I—er—I have received that impression.”