“Do you think it will be as—as bad as—nineteen hundred?”
“No... no, I'm sure it won't. The officials simply can't afford to let that awful thing happen again.”
“It would be... well, discouraging,” said she thoughtfully. “Wouldn't it? To have all your work undone again.”
He found himself startled by her impersonal manner. He saw her, abruptly then, as a mature being. He didn't know how to talk to her. This thoughtful young woman was, curiously, a stranger.... And this was the first moment in which it had occurred to him that she might already have had beginning adult experience. She was an individual; had a life of her own to manage. There would have been men. She was old enough to have thought about marriage, even. It seemed incredible.... He sighed.
“You're worried about me,” she said.
“I shouldn't have brought you out here, dear.”
“I don't fit in.”
“It is a great change for you.”
“I... I'm no good.”
“Betty, dear—that is not true. I can't let you say that, or think it.”