“Am I? Thank God there are men—and men. You can’t be what Carey said.”
For once he had spoken incautiously. He had blurted out something he never meant to say.
“Mr. Carey!” she exclaimed quickly, curiously. “What did Mr. Carey say I was?”
“Oh—”
“No, Robin, you are to tell me. No diplomatic lies.”
A sudden, almost brutal desire came into him to tell her the truth, to revel in plain speaking for once, and to see how she would bear it.
“He said you were an egoist, that you were fine enough in your brilliant selfishness to stand quite alone—”
A faint smile moved the narrow corners of her lips at the last words. He went on.
“—That your ideal of a real man, the sort of man a woman loses her head for, was—”
He stopped. Carey’s description of the Lord Holme and Leo Ulford type had not been very delicate.