She smiled.
"Few women do, if they have any."
"Is any woman without them?"
"Yes, one."
"Name her."
"The absolutely good woman."
For a moment he was silent, struck to silence by the fierceness of her cynicism, a fierceness which had leapt suddenly out of her as a drawn sword leaps from its sheath.
"I don't acknowledge that, Mrs. Chepstow," he said—and at this moment perhaps he was the man talking to himself in the dark, as Nigel often was.
"Of course not. No man would."
"Why not?"