"There remains," he observed, "but one way for you and I ever to marry anybody. And as I'm _hors de concours_, even that hope is ended." She flushed; her lips parted, but she checked what she had meant to say, and they walked forward together in silence for a while until she had made up her mind what to say and how to express it: "Captain Selwyn, there are two things that you do which seem to me unfair. You still have, at times, that far-away, absent expression which excludes me; and when I venture to break the silence, you have a way of answering, 'Yes, child,' and 'No, child'--as though you were inattentive, and I had not yet become an adult. _That_ is my first complaint! . . . _What_ are you laughing at? It is true; and it confuses and hurts me; because I _know_ I am intelligent enough and old enough to--to be treated as a woman!--a woman attractive enough to be reckoned with! But I never seem to be wholly so to you." The laugh died out as she ended; for a moment they stood there, confronting one another. "Do you imagine," he said in a low voice, "that I do not know all that?" "I don't know whether you do. For all your friendship--for all your liking and your kindness to me--somehow--I--I don't seem to stand with you as other women do; I don't seem to stand their chances." "What chances?" "The--the consideration; you don't call any other woman 'child,' do you? You don't constantly remind other women of the difference in your ages, do you? You don't _feel_ with other women that you are--as you please to call it--_hors de concours_--out of the running. And somehow, with me, it humiliates. Because even if I--if I am the sort of a girl who never means to marry, you--your attitude seems to take away the possibility of my changing my mind; it dictates to me, giving me no choice, no liberty, no personal freedom in the matter. . . . It's as though you considered me somehow utterly out of the question--radically unthinkable as a woman. And you assume to take for granted that I also regard you as--as _hors de concours_. . . . Those are my grievances, Captain Selwyn. . . . And I _don't_ regard you so. And I--and it troubles me to be excluded--to be found wanting, inadequate in anything that a woman should be. I know that you and I have no desire to marry each other--but--but please don't make the reason for it either your age or my physical immaturity or intellectual inexperience." Another of those weather-stained seats of Georgia marble stood embedded under the trees near where she had halted; and she seated herself, outwardly composed, and inwardly a little frightened at what she had said.