“When will you be in Rome?” she said.
“And even now,” he continued, ignoring her remark, “even now, what are you doing? Oh, Viola, you’re a prey to the modern madness for crawling in the dirt instead of walking upright in the sun. You might be a goddess and you prefer to be an insect. Isn’t it mad of you? Isn’t it?”
He was really excited, really passionate. His face showed that. There was fire in his eyes. His lips worked convulsively when he was not speaking. And yet there was just a faint ring of the accomplished orator’s music in his voice, a music which suggests a listening ear—and that ear the orator’s own.
Perhaps she heard it. At any rate his passionate attack did not seem to move her.
“I prefer to be what I am,” was all she said.
“What you are! But you don’t know what you are.”
“And how can you pretend to know?” she asked. “Is a man more subtle about a woman than she is about herself?”
He did not answer for a moment. Then he said bluntly:
“Promise me one thing before I go away.”
“I don’t know. What is it?”