Now if I had had a past, and it was, as you say yours is, all over, I shouldn't think it was any man's business to go poking around in it." "That," he said, "is a different matter." "What's a different matter ?" she asked aggressively.
"A woman's past.

That would be a man's business." "Though a man's past is not a woman's business ?" "Oh, we certainly needn't argue that old nonsense.

You're too much the girl of the world to take any such absurd position, Katie." "Of course, being what you call a 'girl of the world' it's absurd I should question the man's point of view, but I can't quite get the logic of it.

You wouldn't marry a woman with a past, and yet the woman who marries you is marrying a man with one." "I've lived a man's life," he said.

And he said it with a certain pride.
"And perhaps she's lived a woman's life," Katie was thinking.