"We're too old to be comrades. That's book rubbish. Men and women have nothing in common, intellectually, unless they're in love. For company, for straight conversation, for business, for sport, a man would rather be with men. And either you and I are like everybody else or we're going to really care for each other. Not for your pretty face and figure, or for my grin, my six feet, and thin shanks; I can care for face and figure in any woman. What's the use of marrying for what you'll scarcely notice in a month?... If you _are you_, Geraldine, under all your attractive surface there's something else which you have never given me." "Wh--what?" she asked faintly. "Intelligent interest in me." "Do you mean," she said slowly, "that you think I underestimate you?" "Not as I am. I don't amount to much; but I might if you cared." "Cared for you?" "No, confound it! Cared for what I could be." "I--I don't think I understand. What could you be?" "A man, for one thing. I'm a thing that dances. A fashionable portrait painter for another. The combination is horrible." "You are a successful painter." "Am I? Geraldine, in all the small talk you and I have indulged in since my return from abroad, have you ever asked me one sincere, intelligent, affectionate question about my work?" "I--yes--but I don't know anything about----" He laughed, and it hurt her. "Don't you understand," she said, "that ordinary people are very shy about talking art to a professional----" "I don't want you to talk art. Any little thing with blue eyes and blond curls can do it. I wanted you to see what I do, say what you think, like it or damn it--only do something about it! You've never been to my studio except to stand with the perfumed crowd and talk commonplaces in front of a picture." "I can't go alone." "Can't you?" he asked, looking closely at her in the dusk, so close that she could see every mocking feature. "Yes," she said in a low, surprised voice, "I could go alone--anywhere--with you.... I didn't realise it before, Duane." "You never tried. You once mistook an impulse of genuine passion for the sort of thing I've done since. You made a terrific fuss about being kissed when I saw, as soon as I saw you, that I wanted to win you, if you'd let me. Since then you've chosen the key-note of our relations, not I, and you don't like my interpretation of my part." For a while she sat silent, preoccupied with this totally new revelation of a man about whom she supposed she had long ago made up her mind. "I'm glad we've had this talk," she said at last. "I am, too. I haven't asked you to fall in love with me; I haven't asked for your confidence. I've asked you to take an intelligent, affectionate interest in what I might become, and perhaps you and I won't be so lonely if you do."