"It is rather an anomalous age.

At fifty a man's taste is almost hypercritical and his attraction to my sex is on the wane.

No, the problem isn't so easy." Dartrey had finished tea and was feeling for his cigarette case.
"I rather fancied, Nora, that he was attracted by you." "Well, he isn't, then," she replied, with a smile.
"He was rather by way of thinking that he was, the other night, but that was simply because he was in a curiously unsettled state and he felt that I was sympathetic." "You are a very clever woman, Nora," he said, looking across at her.
"You could make him care for you if you chose." "Is that to be my sacrifice to the cause ?" she asked.

"Am I to give my soul to its wrong keeper, that our party may flourish ?" "You don't like Tallente ?" "I like him immensely," she contradicted vigorously.

"If I weren't hopelessly in love with some one else, I could find it perfectly easy to try and make life a different place for him." He looked at her with trouble in his kind eyes.