'One can have a man friend as well as a girl friend,' she continued. 'And I don't see why he shouldn't be just as good a friend.'
'The danger is that he become too good.'
'You misunderstand me entirely, Popper; we are friends, and nothing but friends.'
'You are entirely off your head, my child.'
'Ah! you're a Frenchman, you can't understand these things. We are different.'
'I imagine that you are human beings, even though England and America respectively had the intense good fortune of seeing your birth.'
'We're human beings—and more than that, we're nineteenth century human beings. Love is not everything. It is a part of one—perhaps the lower part—an accessory to man's life, needful for the continuation of the species.'
'You use such difficult words, my dear.'
'There is something higher and nobler and purer than love—there is friendship. Ferdinand White is my friend. I have the amplest confidence in him. I am certain that no unclean thought has ever entered his head.'
She spoke quite heatedly, and as she flushed up, the old painter thought her astonishingly handsome. Then she added as an afterthought,—