And of course this was exactly why she didn't want to ask Dorothy for money. For Dorothy would be able to say--perhaps to say it as if she was crowing over her a little--that she had warned her about that contract. Not that Dorothy had warned her one bit, really. Dorothy had not known any more than herself that her Show would be put off and put off and put off; and if the Show had _not_ been put off, all would have been well. But Dorothy was so--peculiar. Her ways were peculiar. She _had_ ways, in fact, not principles. Amory didn't want to be severe on Dorothy, but some of the things she did seemed positively _un_principled. Not to go any further, there was Dorothy's undignified way of regarding her own sex. She seemed to concur in that view of it that made it merely the plaything of the other sex. Of course (to be quite fair) it wasn't to be supposed for a moment that Dorothy would have let Mr. Hamilton Dix kiss her, as he had wanted to kiss Amory. Amory was sure she wouldn't. But for all that there would have been--something--not a kiss--not even a "leading on" perhaps--Amory couldn't have said what it would have been--but there would have been _something_.... Put coarsely, it was a sort of exaggerated sex-consciousness in Dorothy--that and lack of principle. Amory ought to know that exaggerated sex-consciousness by this time. Glenerne had been full of it. The world seemed to be full of it. It seemed an odious domination; Amory could not understand it at all. Why, Cosimo did not want to kiss her.... Because, of course, that sham gesture at her aunt's wedding had not been a kiss. Cosimo quite understood that she was wedded to her art.