I don't like it, do you ?' 'I don't know that I do; but Gerald is only a flirt through sympathy and good nature.

It's Frances who leads him on; she is a flirt by temperament.' 'I'm glad of that,' said Althea.

'I'm sure he is too nice to be one by temperament.' 'After all, it's a very harmless diversion.' 'Do you think it harmless?
It pains me to see a sacred thing being mimicked.' 'I hardly think it's a sacred thing Frances and Gerald are mimicking,' Helen smiled.
'It's love, isn't it ?' 'Love of such a trivial order that I can't feel anything is being taken in vain.' Helen was amused, yet touched by her friend's standards.

Such distaste was not unknown to her, and Gerald's sympathetic propensities had caused her qualms with which she could not have imagined that Althea's had any analogy.

Yet it was not her own taste she was considering that evening after dinner when, in walking up and down with Gerald on the gravelled terrace outside the drawing-room, she told him of Althea's standards.
She felt responsible for Gerald, and that she owed it to Althea that he should not be allowed to displease her.