"There's more, Pat. It isn't so easy to say."
Her intuition leapt to meet his thought. "It's about this." She touched her cheek to his again. "With other men. I won't, if you don't want me to."
"I can't claim any promises from you. You wouldn't keep them anyway."
"I would," was the instant and indignant response. "No; probably I wouldn't," she amended, her voice trailing off, "after you'd been away from me for a while. But what's the harm, Cary?"
"I've told you; it's dangerous."
"And I've told you; it's not, for me. Suppose I'm in love with the man. Must I act like an icicle?"
"Ah, that is a different matter. If you're really in love."
"But how am I to tell whether I am or not without letting him make love to me?"
The naïve logic of it left Scott without adequate answer. After all, these direct contacts were the very essence and experiment of mating, the empiric method which inexorable Nature prescribes. Had the modern flapper, with her daring contempt of what older generations considered the proprieties if not the normal decencies of social intercourse, only reverted to a simpler, more natural method? Of course, carrying the scheme a little further, there were obvious arguments against it, arguments which he did not care to advance to Pat.
"Only be certain," he said after a pause, "that it isn't merely a casual fascination."