“What?” said Cosimo. The golden eyes were glittering on his. Evidently Amory was fighting hard to keep in check some powerful emotion.
“I want you to tell me this, and truthfully, please, and without any false modesty: Do I strike you as the kind of girl decent people might wish not to know?”
Cosimo was thunderstruck. He could only look at her incredulously. Was something worse than a headache the matter with her?
“Do you strike me——” he repeated.
“Yes,” she interrupted. “Am I a—peculiar—sort of person?”
“Peculiar——?”
“Yes. I’ll tell you why I ask in a minute. I want to know how I strike you first. You wouldn’t call me an immodest girl, would you?”
Still Cosimo was all at sea.
“Do you mean—I mean, has somebody been shocked because—well, because you have brave and enlightened views?”
“I don’t mean anything about my views. I mean about myself. To put it brutally, would you think that anybody had the right to say I led—a horrid life?”