"You don't understand!" he cried, "you don't understand!"
Then it struck him that she would never understand, that she would go through life with her narrow ideas, acquired in a girls' school and nurtured in her home. All her divine womanly powers of sympathy and forgiveness would be strangled by her ignorance and her hard-and-fast rules based on inexperience. She was the only woman he knew of her class, but he knew the limitations of that class, and Tony would soon be bound by them like the others. Janey was so different—Janey realised what one felt like when one simply had to go on the bust, when one came beastly muckers. She scolded, but she understood. Tony did not scold, and she did not understand.
"I want you to understand," he said painfully.
"What?"
"About me—about other men."
"Why do you think I don't understand?"
"You don't!—you don't! You simply can't—and if you go on as you are, you never will. Oh, I wish you could! You're too good to be like—other women."
Something in his nervous, excited manner frightened her, and strange to say that faint thrill of fear removed the shame which had tarnished her attitude towards him that day. Once more she felt the subtle magic of his unusualness—the attraction of Mr. Smith.
"Tell me," she said in a low voice, "tell me about yourself."