"All right; I was wrong. You haven't."
"Very well, then!"
"Very well WHAT?"
"James!"
"I'm sorry.—But what are you driving at? I wasn't accusing you, you know; I was simply telling you you were free, which you knew before, and offering you more freedom if you wanted it. Why this outburst of virtue?"
"James, you are rather brutal!"
"I'm sorry if I seem so; I don't mean to be." He shifted his position slightly and went on quite gently with another smile: "Beatrice, if you have successfully met a temptation—or what you look upon as a temptation—I'm sure I'm very glad. After all, we are friends, and what pleases my friend pleases me, other things being equal. But does that pleasing fact in itself alter things between us when, from my own selfish point of view, I don't care in the least whether you overcame the temptation or not? And does it, I ask you, alter facts? Does it make you any less fond of Tommy than you are; does it make you as fond of me as you are of him?"
"Oh, James! You understand so little—"
"Whatever I may understand or not understand I know that you spent all of last evening and practically all yesterday and a great part of the evening before with Tommy, and that you gave no particular evidence of being bored ... Beatrice, you were happy with him, happy as a child, the happiest person in the whole crowd, and you showed it, too! Do you mean to say that you've ever, at any time in your life, been as happy in my society as all that! No! Deny it if you can!"
"James, you are jealous!" The discovery came to her like an inspiration, sending a thrill through her. She did not stop to analyze it now, but when she came to think it over later she realized that there was something in that thrill quite distinct from the satisfaction of finding a good reply to James' really rather searching (though of course quite unfounded) charges.