“Which I––”
“Don’t be odiously polite. I’m arguing, not fishing. If you were deeply in love with me, would it make a good deal of difference to you if several years ago I had been––oh, loose?”
“It would break my heart.”
Marie Louise liked him the better for this, but she held to her argument.
“All right. Now, still supposing that we loved each other, ought I to inquire of you if the man of my possible choice had been perfectly––well, spotless, all that time? Ought I expect that he was saving himself up for me, feeling himself engaged to me, you might say, long before he met me, and keeping perfectly true to his future fiancée––ought I to expect that?”
He flushed a little as he mumbled:
“Hardly!”
She laughed a trifle bitterly:
“So we’re there already?”
“Where?”