"Well, people do. You can't expect to have no conclusions drawn but your own." "You mean conclusions about me and Cosimo?" "I'm not saying _I_ draw any, Amory. I understand perfectly, of course. I mean I know there's nothing wrong. But you can't stop people talking." Amory became still taller. "May I ask who's been talking?" she added. "I won't say besides yourself, but this is the first I've heard of it." "Amory!" said Dorothy, deeply wounded. She lifted her eyes almost humbly. "Do you really think that of me?" "What am I to think?" Amory replied loftily. Yet she was glad that Dorothy had the grace to be ashamed. By twisting and turning and a shameless use of her charms Dorothy might contrive to get her own way with men, but she must not think she could come it over one of her own sex in the same way. "Oh dear, I'm sorry I said anything at all!" Dorothy wailed. "Oh, I'm glad, I assure you!" Amory replied quickly. "I don't believe in driving these things underground and then pretending they don't exist! If a thing is, I want to see it _as_ it is!" "I know you're ever so much braver than I am, dear--I know I'm a dreadful coward at a push--you're worth twenty of me--but still, Amory, people _do_ say things, and not very nice ones, and it could so easily be avoided----" "Avoided!" "I know there isn't anything--I only mean the appearance to people who don't know----" "And what," said Amory slowly, "do you suppose _I_ care for people of that kind, and what they think?" "Yes, you always were splendid and brave--still----" "Have you heard anybody talking like this?" Amory demanded. "I said it was a wicked lie----" "Ah, you _have_ heard somebody!" "Not really saying anything--only wondering--you know how people wonder----" "Then please tell me at once who it was," said Amory with dignity. But Dorothy only grew more confused than ever. "Oh, Amory, I can't do that--it was nothing that wasn't fair in a way--you oughtn't to ask me to do that----" "Be so good as to tell me at once." Dorothy was silent. As a matter of fact the people who had been speaking of Amory and Cosimo were Walter Wyron and Laura Beamish, but Dorothy did weakly hope that if things were driven underground they might at least be forgotten. "Aren't you going to tell me?" Amory demanded. "No," Dorothy mumbled. "You refuse?" "Yes," Dorothy mumbled. And then suddenly she broke out almost passionately-- "I don't blame you in the very least, Amory, but I do blame Cosimo! I do, and it's no good saying I don't. A man's no right to be always about with a woman, getting her talked about, and doing things for her, and always in and out of her place! I do think he might know better!" Amory was smiling again now, but not very pleasantly--"Oh!" she said. "So when you said you thought I ought to marry Cosimo, you meant that things had gone so far that I might as well?"