"If you only knew how easy it is to care for you," she said with that sweet fearlessness so characteristic of her.
He bit his lips in silence.
Presently she said: "I suppose there'll be gossip in the other room. Rosalie and Cecil will be cynical and they also will try to be witty at our expense. But I don't care. Do you?"
"Shall we go in?"
"No.... I haven't had you for four years. If you don't care what is said about us, I don't." And she looked up at him with the most engaging candour.
"I'm only thinking about you, Athalie—"
"Don't bother to, Clive. Pretty nearly everything has been said about me, I fancy. And, unless it might damage you I'll go anywhere with you, do anything with you. I know that I'm all right; and I care no longer what others say or think."
"But you know," he said, "that is a theory which will not work—"
"You are wrong, Clive. Nobody cares what sort of character a popular actress may have. Her friends are not disturbed by her reputation; the public crowds to see her. And it's about that way with me, I imagine. Because I don't suppose many people believe me to be respectable. Only—there is no man alive who can say of his own knowledge that I am not,—whatever he and his brothers and sisters may imagine."