"I--I confess I like your face," she admitted, "and I believe you have
tried to tell me the truth about yourself, but our situation is so
peculiar, so different from what I have been taught was proper." She
smiled sadly, her eyes misting. "I am afraid you will not understand.
You can scarcely appreciate how strictly I have been brought up, or
what such an unconventional meeting as this means to me. I ought to be
ashamed of myself."

"But are you?"

"Really I--I do not seem to be. It almost frightens me to realize I am
not, I do not understand myself at all. Why should I talk thus frankly
with you? Why feel confidence in you? It is not in accordance with
the rules of my old life, nor of my nature. Such actions would shock
those who know me; they ought to shock me. Am I in a dream, from which
I am going to awaken presently? Is that the explanation?"

I shook my head.

"No, not in that sense, at least. Rather the other way around. You
have been in a dream all your life--a dream that some social code
somewhere constituted the real world. Under these petty regulations of
conduct you were not yourself at all, only a make-believe. Something
serious has occurred in your life, and changed all in an instant. You
have been thrown against the real world. You find it not to be what
you supposed. It is no cause for shame or regret; womanhood lies
deeper than any pretense at gentility. Men seldom fail to recognize
this fact--their lives of struggle compel them to, but a woman finds it
hard to understand."