“Why did you think I had been experimenting on you?” he asked.
“Why?” she repeated. The sense of having put herself in the wrong exasperated her with him. “Oh, I dare say you were curious. Don’t you suppose I have noticed that men are puzzled at me? What did you mean by saying that you thought I would be equal to anything?”
“I meant—I thought you would like to be treated frankly.”
“And you wouldn’t treat everybody so?”
“I wouldn’t treat Mrs. Maynard so.”
“Oh!” she said. “You treat me upon a theory.”
“Don’t you like that? We treat everybody upon a theory”—
“Yes, I know”
“And I should tell you the worst of anything at once, because I think you are one of the kind that don’t like to have their conclusions made for them.”
“And you would really let women make their own conclusions,” she said. “You are very peculiar!” She waited a while, and then she asked, “And what is your theory of me?”