"Okay, let's not have an argument about it. We had fun, didn't we? It was a good evening." "Not to me, it wasn't." "But why, for Pete's sake? Tell me why? What did I do, that was so unusual? Do you mind if I tell you something? Please don't get on a high horse, don't lose your temper--" "I've already lost it. It's so far lost I'll probably never get it back again." "All right, but just listen ... please. You're a wonderful person. But you have so low a boiling point at times that you're your own worst enemy. You cut off your nose to spite your face. I do it, too ... often enough. Maybe that's why we get along so well together." "Do we? Right now I'd say we were more like a tiger and a lion in a cage together." "All right. A tiger and a lion can get along very well together, if their temperaments coincide. They can even mate and give birth to a _tigron_. There's one at the Bronx Zoo. In fact--" "Now you're trying to be amusing again. You'd better be damned serious, because I was never more serious in my life ... about what happened on that dance floor. I'm going to say something that will shock you. You think I'm a prude. You've said so often enough, despite the fact that I've never behaved like one with you in bed, have I? _Have I?_" His eyes became suddenly serious. "No, darling--of course not. And if I ever called you a prude I'm sorry. That was only when I first met you and you did seem--" "A scared virgin? All right, maybe I was. You wouldn't understand, probably, if I told you what torments I went through before I met you; what a high, terrible price I had to pay for feeling that way, for being like that. Most people think it amusing." "I never did. I thought it tragic but I loved you all the more because of it." "You felt sorry for me, did you? Pitied me?" "I didn't say that. Do we have to talk about it now? Do you want to spoil the rest of the night?" "What rest of the night? Do you think after what happened this evening there's going to be any more fun in bed for us?" "Be quiet, will you? Drop it. I know what it cost you to say that. You're not the kind of woman who thinks in those terms. What has happened between us meant something to me. Why can't you believe it?" "Oh, yes--it probably did mean something. Laying a round-heels would mean something to even a young hoodlum with about as much sensitivity as a chimpanzee. It's important to the male. I've been told that." He said nothing in reply, but he withdrew his arm from her waist, and sat very straight and still at her side. She could imagine what he was thinking. He was afraid of angering her further, of saying the wrong thing. What _could_ he say, really? There were no right words, everything he told her would be a lie. She'd seen the way he'd kissed Lathrup on the dance floor and the burning outrage, the shame she'd felt, after all she'd meant to him--or had allowed herself to think she'd meant to him--couldn't be driven from her mind by anything he might say.