"
"I see a lot more than that. You don't know what an advantage it is to
be as I am, rather cold and unresponsive to women and unattractive and
negligible--negligible, that is the exact word--to them. YOU can't look
at a woman for five minutes without losing sight of her in a mist
of imaginative excitement. Because she looks back at you. I have the
privilege of the negligible--which is a cool head. Miss Grammont has a
startled and matured mind, an original mind. Yes. And there is something
more to be said. Her intelligence is better than her character."
"I don't quite see what you are driving at."
"The intelligence of all intelligent women is better than their
characters. Goodness in a woman, as we understand it, seems to imply
necessarily a certain imaginative fixity. Miss Grammont has an impulsive
and adventurous character. And as I have been saying she was a spoilt
child, with no discipline.... You also are a person of high intelligence
and defective controls. She is very much at loose ends. You--on account
of the illness of that rather forgotten lady, Miss Martin Leeds--"
"Aren't you rather abusing the secrets of the confessional?"
"This IS the confessional. It closes to-morrow morning but it is the
confessional still. Look at the thing frankly.
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