“I don’t know.... It gets back to a sin being a sin because you think it is. It’s a feeling. I’ve seen these women in France, women I knew were having affairs, and they were sweet and modest—and natural. An American woman can’t seem to have an affair and still be sweet and modest—and natural. She feels she is doing something wicked and degrading, and consequently is degraded. She is being deliberately bad.... Don’t you see?” “I—I think so.... There’s something. I have the same notion about it as you, but I couldn’t explain it. I guess you’re right.... Do you think a man can be in love with two girls at once?” He asked the question suddenly. She laughed joyously. “Now, you aren’t going to tell me you are in love with me, too?... Please don’t. I suppose a lot of these boys will fancy they’re in love with me just because I happen to be moderately neat and clean and good-looking and because I’m out here alone like this.... I’ll stand to them for their sweethearts back home, and all that, but they won’t be in love with me in the least—and neither are you.” This frankness was truly American, modern American. Kendall could not imagine Andree saying or thinking such things; he could not imagine his mother saying or thinking such things. And why? To Andree love was love—the great business of life. Everything else was subordinate to it. To his mother love was—was just a little bit off color, because there was sex in it. His mother could love her son frankly, but she could not love her husband frankly nor talk with frankness about it.... Original sin clung to love in her mind. It was the thing that had cast man out of Paradise, and while one married and bore children, and marital relations were necessary, nevertheless there was something squalid and indecent about them. Andree saw nothing indecent in sex, as she saw nothing indecent in eating her dinner.... Maude Knox was more like Andree than like his mother, but even there there was a vast difference. There was the difference of race and of racial philosophy. Maude placed her hand on Kendall’s arm. “Be nice to that little girl,” she said. “Don’t hurt her.... Be fair.” “What do you mean?... Do you mean I should marry her?” She hesitated. “I don’t know.... Marriage!...” Her own inherited prejudices were lifting their heads now. Marriage!... Marriage with a French girl with whom one was having relations! That was different. She hesitated and did not give him a frank answer. “Well?” he said. “You mustn’t ask me.... I can’t answer that. It is a thing you’ll have to decide.” “I guess you have answered,” he said, gloomily. “Perhaps—and perhaps I’m ashamed of myself for answering so.... But I was born in America and brought up in a surrounding of sewing-circles.” There was a pause. Then he said, almost as if to himself, “You’re the sort of girl I’d like to be in love with.” “That’s a very nice thing to say—but you’re not.”