"Miss Marley," Claire began, "do you think it matters what people think?"
Miss Marley, who invariably rolled her own cigarettes, took up a small silver box, flattened the cigarette-paper out carefully, and prepared to fill it before answering. Then she said:
"Very few people do think; that is generally what matters—absence of thought. Speech without thought is responsible for most people's disasters."
"But it can't matter what people say if it isn't true, can it?" Claire persisted. "I mean—nonsense can't count against any one?"
"I'm rather afraid it does matter," said Miss Marley, lighting her cigarette. "Nonsense is very infectious, and it often carries a good deal of weight. I have known nonsense break people's hearts."
"Oh!" said Claire in a rising breath. She was wondering what it was like to have a broken heart. Somewhere in the back of her mind she knew that she was going to have one, half of one; but what really frightened her was that the other half was going to belong to Winn.
"Could any one," she said under her breath, "think any harm of him? He told me you knew all about us, and that I might talk to you if I wanted to; but I didn't then. There didn't seem anything to say. But now I do want to know; I want to know awfully what you think. If I asked him, he'd only laugh or else he'd be angry. He's very young in some ways, you know, Miss Marley—younger than I am."
"Yes," agreed Miss Marley; "men are always, to the end of their lives, very young in some ways."
"I never thought," Claire went on breathlessly, "that people would dream of blaming him because we were together. Why, it's so stupid! If they only knew! He's so good!"
"If he's that," said Miss Marley, smiling into the fire, "you've succeeded in making a saint of a Staines, a very difficult experiment! I shouldn't advise you to run away too much with that idea, however."