“Let’s not talk about it,” he said, uncomfortably, for this opened up a field of disagreeable apprehensions that he did not want to undertake. “We’re talking too much about me. Let’s talk about something else.” “But I want to talk about you.... I’m afraid—afraid you’re getting into an entanglement that will be—a bad thing for you.... If you do marry this girl and take her home, what will your people say? How will your friends receive her?... Because the story would leak out. It would be sure to leak out. People know about you. Your chum knows, and others know....” “Andree is good,” he said, “and it doesn’t make any difference what people think.” “Not in Paris. But in America it would make a lot of difference.... She would be whispered about and talked about—and people might—might refuse to receive her.” He was angry now. “People are rotten and narrow. Andree is better than all of them put together. What do I care for what they say or think?” “You would care a great deal—and so would she. She would soon find out what people were thinking. Here she may be able to go along and believe that she is not doing anything wrong. Mind, I don’t say she is bad. I’m almost able to sympathize with her. If I weren’t your friend, if I didn’t know you, and this were all happening to a stranger, I’m sure I should be able to understand and not to blame her.... As it is, I’m truly sorry for her.... But I do know you, and that makes it seem different. Things are always different when they strike close to home....” “I suppose so.” “Well, she would find herself in a different world, a world that lives in a different way, and that world would make her feel as if she had done wrong, and she would be very unhappy....” “I don’t believe it. Not if I were with her.” “But you—when you get home _you_ will think differently about this.... You wouldn’t marry an American girl who had—done as Andree has done.... Would you?” He thought briefly. “No,” he said, honestly. “So, if you married her, you would begin to think about that some day.... You would.... And you would wonder what she had done before she met you—if—if you had been the only man she ever loved. Don’t you see?...” “I don’t see. I know her. You don’t know her at all. You don’t know how sweet and gentle and decent she is. You don’t know how she thinks.... She is wonderful....” He was loyal, at least, and she could not help being glad of it. Loyalty was a quality she especially admired. “She may be all of that, Ken, but it wouldn’t matter. Other people wouldn’t know it and wouldn’t believe it.... Your mother ...” His mother!... He knew what his mother would think and what his mother would do. If he took Andree home his mother would be suspicious of her because she was French. Then, if the story should leak out, or a hint of it should be sent to do its slinking work, his mother would hate Andree—no less. She would make it her business to eliminate Andree and to render her life unendurable.