ANN. Oh, that stupid old joke of yours about me! Do please drop it. Why do you say things that you know must pain me? I do my best to please you, Jack: I suppose I may tell you so now that you are my guardian. You will make me so unhappy if you refuse to be friends with me. TANNER. [studying her as gloomily as he studied the dust] You need not go begging for my regard. How unreal our moral judgments are! You seem to me to have absolutely no conscience--only hypocrisy; and you can't see the difference--yet there is a sort of fascination about you. I always attend to you, somehow. I should miss you if I lost you. ANN. [tranquilly slipping her arm into his and walking about with him] But isn't that only natural, Jack? We have known each other since we were children. Do you remember? TANNER. [abruptly breaking loose] Stop! I remember EVERYTHING. ANN. Oh, I daresay we were often very silly; but-- TANNER. I won't have it, Ann. I am no more that schoolboy now than I am the dotard of ninety I shall grow into if I live long enough. It is over: let me forget it. ANN. Wasn't it a happy time? [She attempts to take his arm again]. TANNER. Sit down and behave yourself. [He makes her sit down in the chair next the writing table]. No doubt it was a happy time for you. You were a good girl and never compromised yourself. And yet the wickedest child that ever was slapped could hardly have had a better time. I can understand the success with which you bullied the other girls: your virtue imposed on them. But tell me this: did you ever know a good boy? ANN. Of course. All boys are foolish sometimes; but Tavy was always a really good boy. TANNER. [struck by this] Yes: you're right. For some reason you never tempted Tavy. ANN. Tempted! Jack! TANNER. Yes, my dear Lady Mephistopheles, tempted. You were insatiably curious as to what a boy might be capable of, and diabolically clever at getting through his guard and surprising his inmost secrets. ANN. What nonsense! All because you used to tell me long stories of the wicked things you had done--silly boys tricks! And you call such things inmost secrets: Boys' secrets are just like men's; and you know what they are! TANNER. [obstinately] No I don't. What are they, pray? ANN. Why, the things they tell everybody, of course. TANNER. Now I swear I told you things I told no one else. You lured me into a compact by which we were to have no secrets from one another. We were to tell one another everything, I didn't notice that you never told me anything. ANN. You didn't want to talk about me, Jack. You wanted to talk about yourself.