"And you know how to make other people want, eh?" Danny muttered. He took a step forward, and Sylvia hoped he was not going to try to kiss her--she felt disinclined at this moment for a long explanation--but he went off, whistling. For a long time Sylvia stood by the window, looking down at the traffic and the lights coming out one by one in the windows opposite. She hoped that Danny would not end like Monkley, and she determined to be prompt in checking the first signs of his doing so. Standing here in this room, that was now dark except for the faint transitory shadows upon the walls and ceiling of lighted vehicles below, Sylvia's thoughts went back to the time she had spent with Blanche. It seemed to her that then she had been wiser than she was now, for all the books she had read since; or was it that she was growing up and becoming an actress in scenes that formerly she had regarded with the secure aloofness of a child? "I'm not innocent," she said to herself. "I know everything that can be known. But yet when Monkley tried to do that I was horrified. I felt sick and frightened and angry, oh, dreadfully angry! Yet when Blanche behaved as she did I did not mind at all; I used to encourage her. Oh, why am I not a boy? If I were a boy, I would show people that making love isn't really a bit necessary. Yet sometimes I liked Arthur to make love to me. I can't make myself out. I think I must be what people call an exceptional person. I hope Danny won't make love to me. But I feel he will; and if he does I shall kill myself; I can't go on living like this with everybody making love to me. I'm not like Blanche or Mabel; I don't like it. How I used to hate Mabel! Shall I ever get like her? Oh, I wish, I wish, I wish I were a boy. I don't believe Danny will be any better than Jimmy was. Yet he doesn't frighten me so much. He doesn't seem so much there as Jimmy was. But if he does make love to me, it will be more dangerous. How shall I ever escape from here? I'm sure Mrs. Gonner will never lift the flap."