“Not yet.  You say that you think something threatens you?  What is it?”

“Not what threatens you,” she said in contempt.

“That is no answer.”

“It is enough for you to know.”

He looked her hard in the eyes.  “Perhaps,” he said in a low voice, “I know more about you than you imagine I do, Geraldine—­since last April.”

She felt the blood leave her face, the tension crisping her muscles; she sat up very straight and slender among the cushions and defied him.

“What do you—­think you know?” she tried to sneer, but her voice shook and failed.

He said:  “I’ll tell you.  For one thing, you’re playing fast and loose with Dysart.  He’s a safe enough proposition—­but what is that sort of thing going to arouse in you?”

“What do you mean?” Her voice cleared with an immense relief.  He noted it.

“It’s making you tolerant,” he said quietly, “familiar with subtleties, contemptuous of standards.  It’s rubbing the bloom off you.  You let a man who is married come too close to you—­you betray enough curiosity concerning him to do it.  A drifting woman does that sort of thing, but why do you cut your cables?  Good Lord, Geraldine, it’s a fool business—­permitting a man an intimacy——­”

“More harmless than his wife permits you!” she retorted.

“That is not true.”

“You are supposed to lie about such things, aren’t you?” she said, reddening to the temples.  “Oh, I am learning your rotten code, you see—­the code of all these amiable people about me.  You’ve done your part to instruct me that promiscuous caresses are men’s distraction from ennui; Rosalie evidently is in sympathy with that form of amusement—­many men and women among whom I live in town seem to be quite as casual as you are....  I did have standards once, scarcely knowing what they meant; I clung to them out of instinct.  And when I went out into the world I found nobody paying any attention to them.”

“You are wrong.”

“No, I’m not.  I go among people and see every standard I set up, ignored.  I go to the theatre and see plays that embody everything I supposed was unthinkable, let alone unutterable.  But the actors utter everything, and the audience thinks everything—­and sometimes laughs.  I can’t do that—­yet.  But I’m progressing.”

“Geraldine——­”

“Wait!...  My friends have taught me a great deal during this last year—­by word, precept, and example.  Things I held in horror nobody notices enough to condone.  Take treachery, for example.  The marital variety is all around me.  Who cares, or is even curious after an hour’s gossip has made it stale news?  A divorce here, a divorce there—­some slight curiosity to see who the victims may marry next time—­that curiosity satisfied—­and so is everybody.  And they go back to their business of money-getting and money-spending—­and that’s what my friends have taught me.  Can you wonder that my familiarity with it all breeds contempt enough to seek almost any amusement in sheer desperation—­as you do?”