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She sighed. “I hate to believe so.”

“Yes. It is unpleasant to give up the flattering notion that our grand dreams are our real selves, and that our mean little schemes and actions are just accidental—or devil—or somebody else besides self.”

She looked at him and he was astonished to see that there were tears in her eyes. “Don’t—please!” she pleaded. “Don’t make it harder for me to do what I’ve got to do.”

“Got to do? Nonsense.”

“No, indeed,” said she, intensely in earnest. “Remember, I’m a woman. And a woman has got to do—what’s expected of her.”

“So has a man if he’s the weak sort.”

He studied her with an expression of sympathy bordering on pity, but without the least condescension; on the contrary, with a radiation of equality, of fellow-feeling that was perhaps his greatest charm. “Don’t mind what I’ve said,” he went on in the kindliest, friendliest tone. “I’m not fit to talk with young girls. I’ve got my training altogether in a world where there aren’t any young girls, but only experienced women of one kind and another. You’ve been brought up to a certain sort of life, and the only thing for you to do is to live it. I’ve been talking the creed of my sort of life, and that’s as different from your sort as wild duck from domestic.”