"A friendship can't be one-sided, can it?
And it isn't fair when you give everything, that I should give nothing." His scruples surrendered immediately to her argument.

"You give everything--you give happiness," he said--a strange speech certainly from the twilight lover of Alice.

However, as she reasoned clearly after her first perplexity, men were often strange when one least expected or desired strangeness.

At thirty-seven, whatever else life had denied her, she felt that it had granted her a complete understanding of men; and it was out of this complete understanding that she observed brightly after a minute: "Well, if you feel that way, we are obliged to be friends." At least she would prove by her frankness that she was not one of those foolish women who are always taking things seriously.
"Yes, you give happiness.

You scatter it, all over the place," he went on, groping an instant after the right words.
"Cousin Jimmy used to say," she laughed back, "that I had a sunny temper." "That's it--that's what I meant," he replied eagerly; and she was impressed again by his utter inability to make light conversation.