“No,” she said. “It must be somebody else. Don't ask me. I should become involved—I might do harm.” She had surmounted her emotion; she was able to look at the matter with surprising clearness and decision. “I should do harm,” she repeated.
“You don't count with her effect on you.”
“You can't possibly imagine her effect on me. I'm not a man.”
“But won't you take anything—about her—from me? You know I'm really not a fool—not even very impressionable?”
“Oh no!” she said impatiently. “No—of course not.”
“Pray why?”
“There are other things to reckon with.” She looked coldly beyond him out of the window. “A man's intelligence when he is in love—how far can one count on it?”
There was nothing but silence for that, or perhaps the murmured, “Oh, I don't agree,” with which Lindsay met it. He rode down her logic with a simple appeal. “Then after all,” he said, “you're not my friend.”
It goaded her into something like an impertinence. “After you have married her,” she said, “you'll see.”
“You will be hers then,” he declared.