“I’m not saying I draw any, Amory. I understand perfectly, of course. I mean I know there’s nothing wrong. But you can’t stop people talking.”
Amory became still taller.
“May I ask who’s been talking?” she added. “I won’t say besides yourself, but this is the first I’ve heard of it.”
“Amory!” said Dorothy, deeply wounded. She lifted her eyes almost humbly. “Do you really think that of me?”
“What am I to think?” Amory replied loftily. Yet she was glad that Dorothy had the grace to be ashamed. By twisting and turning and a shameless use of her charms Dorothy might contrive to get her own way with men, but she must not think she could come it over one of her own sex in the same way.
“Oh dear, I’m sorry I said anything at all!” Dorothy wailed.
“Oh, I’m glad, I assure you!” Amory replied quickly. “I don’t believe in driving these things underground and then pretending they don’t exist! If a thing is, I want to see it as it is!”
“I know you’re ever so much braver than I am, dear—I know I’m a dreadful coward at a push—you’re worth twenty of me—but still, Amory, people do say things, and not very nice ones, and it could so easily be avoided——”
“Avoided!”
“I know there isn’t anything—I only mean the appearance to people who don’t know——”