’Very likely it is, though you don’t mean it.  When you read, you only poison your mind.  It is your reading that has made you what you are, without faith, without feeling.  You dissect everything, you calculate motives cynically, you have learnt to despise everyone who believes what you refuse to, you make your own intellect the centre of the world.  You are dangerous.’

‘What a character!  To whom am I dangerous?’

’To anyone whom it pleases you to tempt, in whom you find the beginnings of disbelief.’

‘In brief, I have no principles?’

‘Of course you have none.’

‘In other words, I am selfish?’

‘Intensely so.’

It was hard to discover whether she were in earnest.  Wilfrid examined her for a moment, and concluded that she must be.  Her eyes were gleaming with no mock seriousness, and there was even a slight quiver about her lips.  In all their exchanges of banter he had never known her look and speak quite as she did now.  As he regarded her there came a flush to her cheek.  She turned her head away and rode on.

’And what moves you to visit me with this castigation at present, Miss Redwing?’ he asked, still maintaining his jesting tone.

‘I don’t know,’ she answered carelessly.  ’I felt all at once able to say what I thought.’

‘Then you do really think all this?’

‘Assuredly I do.’

He kept silence a little.

‘And you can’t see,’ he began, rather more seriously, ’that you are deplorably lacking in the charity which surely should be among your principles?’

‘There are some things to which charity must not be extended.’

‘Let us say, then, discretion, insight.’  He spoke yet more earnestly.  ’You judge me, and, in truth, you know as little of me as anyone could.  The attitude of your mind prevents you from understanding me in the least; it prevents you from understanding any human being.  You are consumed with prejudice, and prejudice of the narrowest, most hopeless kind.  Am I too severe?’

’Not more so than you have often been.  Many a time you have told me how you despised me.’

He was silent, then spoke impulsively.

’Well, perhaps the word is not too strong; though it is not your very self that I despise, but the ignorance and bigotry which possess you.  It is a pity; I believe you might be a woman of quite a different kind.’

‘Of pronounced character?’

’Precisely.  You are neither one thing nor another.  You have told me what you think of me; shall I be equally frank and speak as if you were a college friend?  For at all events we are friends.’

‘I am not sure of that.’