and I, being young, didn't understand and was under the impression that
young men meant all they said, and--

He would be talking now if I had not stamped my foot and stopped his
rambling. His insinuations sounded as if I were a feeble-minded
creature and couldn't tell truth from untruth, or know when a man meant
or didn't mean what he said, and had never heard things of the same
sort before. I've heard them before, and in several different places.
I am a good many things I ought not to be, but I am not feeble-minded.
I told him-- It does not matter what I told him, but I made him
understand I could take care of myself without the help of the town,
and, while I appreciated his effort to keep me from thinking the men in
Twickenham did not mean what they said, and were not to be relied on,
and not to be trusted, and that honor was not held very high by them
where young girls were concerned, it was difficult to believe it, for I
had been made to understand by others that certain old-fashioned things
were still held sacred there, and the dangers and temptations of the
city were absent. When I saw how red his fat, round face got and how
squirmy his legs and how hard he fanned I knew I had better go in. I
went, but I didn't say good night.

Mad! Was I mad? I was. For a long time I sat by the window and
talked to Billy in my mind and told him what I thought of men old-maids
and prissy places and gossipy spinsters and flirtatious widows, and of
people who didn't have anything to talk of but one another; and then,
as the moon came out clearer, I seemed to see myself clearer also, and
after a while it came over me that maybe I had been a little nicer to
Whythe than was necessary just to see if a man couldn't get comforted
sooner than he thought. I had been doing a little scientific
experimenting along a different way from Jess's way; and then my eyes