"It was something Dorothy told me. Perhaps I'll tell you in a few minutes, but I don't in the least want to. Yes, I will have some more tea, please. Cosimo----" She spoke so shortly that Cosimo started and almost dropped the teacup. There was that in her tone which suggested that, though she had only that moment resolved that what she had to tell him might be told by and by, it was torn from her now by something stronger than herself. Cosimo had turned. "What? Good gracious, how you startled me." "I want you to tell me something, Cosimo." "What?" said Cosimo. The golden eyes were glittering on his. Evidently Amory was fighting hard to keep in check some powerful emotion. "I want you to tell me this, and truthfully, please, and without any false modesty: Do I strike you as the kind of girl decent people might wish not to know?" Cosimo was thunderstruck. He could only look at her incredulously. Was something worse than a headache the matter with her? "Do you strike me----" he repeated. "Yes," she interrupted. "Am I a--peculiar--sort of person?" "Peculiar----?" "Yes. I'll tell you why I ask in a minute. I want to know how I strike you first. You wouldn't call me an immodest girl, would you?" Still Cosimo was all at sea. "Do you mean--I mean, has somebody been shocked because--well, because you have brave and enlightened views?" "I don't mean anything about my views. I mean about myself. To put it brutally, would you think that anybody had the right to say I led--a horrid life?" Cosimo had been standing gaping, with the cup in his hand. This time he did drop the cup. He gasped. "Do I understand----" "Answer my question," Amory commanded. "Do I give people that impression?" "You----!" was all that Cosimo could say. "Do I give _you_ that impression?" "Amory----!" But she put up her hand peremptorily and continued. "So that if anybody _does_ think that, you'd say it was just the vileness of their own minds?" (Amory herself could not help noticing that somehow it sounded worse when put in this way than it had when Dorothy had talked about "conclusions.") "My dear girl----!" "Mere unconventionality apart, you wouldn't say that?" "Wouldn't ... why, anybody who'd say that must be mad!" Amory straightened her back and nodded. "Thank you. That's all I wanted to know," she said. "I was a little afraid to trust my own judgment, that's all. Thank you." But apparently it was not all that Cosimo wanted to know. Of course such a subject was always interesting quite apart from its personal application; many times he and Amory had discussed that kind of thing in the abstract by the half-day together; but now that was not all. His face was quite grimly set. Slowly he drew up a chair to where Amory sat, bolt upright and robed in her consciousness of rectitude, on the sofa. "This," he said slowly, "is interesting. May I hear a little more about it, please?"