"Oh, how absurd!... You're a different kind of human being, that's all, you belong to a different world."
"How a different world? I'm Laurence's friend, why can't I be yours?"
A sudden sternness, a definite recoil, in her expression, warned him off this ground.
"How could you be my friend? There is nothing in common between you and me," she said coldly.
"Now, how do you know there isn't? You say yourself you don't know me!... But I think you've made up your mind that you don't want to ... you think I'm frivolous and ridiculous, because I manage to enjoy life, don't you now? A middle-aged butterfly, a mere sensualist—isn't that it?"
"Well—something like that," Mary admitted. "But it oughtn't to matter to you what I think.... I told you I don't understand people very well, the older I get the less I understand them, and I can't make friends."
This quiet statement had an air of finality. He was silent, looking at her thoughtfully, with a keen shrewdness, a questioning puzzled gaze.
"Well, friends or not, I admire you very much," he said abruptly. "I hate to have you think me such a poor creature."
"I imagine it won't disturb you very much, if I do. You wouldn't care much for any woman's opinion, you like to amuse yourself with women but you don't take them seriously, you look down on them. You think they're all alike and that a few compliments and pretty speeches are all they want or can understand. You like to take them in, and then laugh at them, it amuses you.... And men too—you like to play with people, try experiments. You're more cool-headed and sharp than most people, you think almost every one is a fool, in some way or other, and you like to find out how—turn them inside out. That's how you enjoy life."