“Yes.”
“You thought I had become superficial, vacillating?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I am,” she said, to my surprise. “I didn’t know it. You gave me a shock, but you made me realize it. You still think so?”
“My dear Anne,” I said carefully. “How can you be otherwise? Everything is against you. What in life is real to you, except pleasure? You’ve been shown nothing else in life—granted it isn’t your fault. You have been cheated out of something bigger. Other women will never notice it; thank heaven, you do. Now, to explain what I felt on coming back out of the other world. Before, I don’t suppose it ever would have occurred to me. I took the American man’s point of view—from the best of motives, I grant you—our attitude of chivalry towards you. But, over there, something else has come to us, a bigger conception of you, an ideal of service. That is the difference in point of view.”
“But what am I to do?” she said, shrinking under the directness of the opinion she had invited.
“Heavens, you’re making me talk like a confounded, self-righteous prig,” I exclaimed, with a sudden realization, “and God knows I’m far from that.”
“No, no! Say what you mean. You, you do not quite trust my sincerity, do you?”
“Not quite.”
“Why?”