Miss Ramsey: "Severe?"
Miss Garnett: "Not tolerating anything that's the least out of the way in other people. Taking you up about your ideas and showing where you're wrong, or even silly. Spiritually snubbing, Conny calls it."
Miss Ramsey: "Oh, I like that in him. It's so invigorating. It braces up all your good resolutions. It makes you ashamed; and shame is sanative."
Miss Garnett: "That's just what I told Conny, or the same thing. Do you think another one would hurt me? I will risk it, anyway." She takes another chocolate from the box. "Go on."
Miss Ramsey: "Oh, I was just wishing that I had been out longer, and had a little more experience of men. Then I should know how to act. How do you suppose people do, generally?"
Miss Garnett: "Why, you know, if they find a man in love with them, after he's engaged to another girl, they make him go back to her, it doesn't matter whether they're in love with him themselves or not."
Miss Ramsey: "I'm not in love with Mr. Ashley, please."
Miss Garnett: "No; I'm supposing an extreme case."
Miss Ramsey, after a moment of silent thought: "Did you ever hear of anybody doing it?"
Miss Garnett: "Not just in our set. But I know it's done continually."