You know how divinely exalted young women can become. Begged for a cyanide pill as though it were her right, as though I should be doing her out of a great spiritual experience if I hesitated. Men don’t behave like that at all. A man accepts the means of death without looking at it, hides it in his smallest pocket and examines it with loathing when he gets home or wherever is serving him as a home. No, martyrdom for us has no attraction—not, at any rate, for the more active type. You never dreamed she had that sort of past, did you? And I would not have told you, if you hadn’t made that unjust remark about her: bright and beautiful as the vicar’s daughter in a Victorian novel. Pah! There’s nothing artificial in her character. It’s not an attack of poise brought on by reading too many women’s magazines. Dina impresses everyone, even on first acquaintance, with her extraordinary inner happiness. It’s real, and only an unromantic mind like yours could have thought it was not.
