"It won't hurt you to do a strong thing for once in your life."
"Even if it didn't hurt me I think it would hurt her very much. For, Valentine, I believe you said the truth when you said to me once, 'That girl loves you.' Do you remember?"
"Perfectly. Loves you, your birth, your position, your money, your good looks, perhaps your standpoint above the gutter. I can well believe that Miss Bright, like all her sisterhood, loves with undying love that combination of flesh-pots, her notion of the ego of a man."
"She has never accepted a halfpenny from me."
"Because she means eventually to have twenty-one shillings in the pound.
Have some more champagne."
"Yes. You are wrong, Val, utterly wrong. Cuckoo's not mercenary. If such a girl could be good, she is good."
There was just a touch of the maudlin in Julian's voice. He went on very earnestly, and nodding his head emphatically over even his conjunctions.
"And if she were what you say, she would have no influence over me, and I should hate her. But to me she is just what a good girl might be. Why, even the doctor—"
"Was he there to-night?" Valentine cried, with a sudden inspiration.
"Of course he was. And you know what a particular little chap he is."