"Nothing in particular. I just gathered the impression."
"Don't jump to any conclusions about Esmé," advised his friend. "Most men think her a desperate flirt. She does like attention and admiration. What woman doesn't? And Esmé is very much a woman."
"Evidently!"
"If she seems heartless, it's because she doesn't understand. She enjoys her own power without comprehending it. Esmé has never been really interested in any man. If she had ever been hurt, herself, she would be more careful about hurting others. Yet the very men who have been hardest hit remain her loyal friends."
"A tribute to her strategy."
"A finer quality than that. It is her own loyalty, I think, that makes others loyal to her. But the men here aren't up to her standard. She is complex, and she is ambitious, without knowing it. Fine and clean as our Worthington boys are, there isn't one of them who could appeal to the imagination and idealism of a girl like Esmé Elliot. For Esmé, under all that lightness, is an idealist; the idealist who hasn't found her ideal."
"And therefore hasn't found herself."
She flashed a glance of inquiry and appraisal at him. "That's rather subtle of you," she said. "I hope you don't know too much about women, Hal."
"Not I! Just a shot in the dark."
"I said there wasn't a man here up to her standard. That isn't quite true. There is one,—you met him to-night,—but he has troubles of his own, elsewhere," she added, smiling. "I had hoped—but there has always been a friendship too strong for the other kind of sentiment between him and Esmé."