"I'm not going to be rash," said Harley. "I never was rash, and I'm
not going to begin now, but I shall use my nerve. That has been the
trouble with me in the past. I haven't been firm. I have let that
girl have her own way in everything, and I'm very much afraid I have
spoiled her. She behaves like a child with indulgent parents. In
the last instance, the Parker proposal, she simply ran her
independence into the ground. She was not only rebellious to me, but
she was impertinent to him. Her attitude toward him was not nature
at all; it was not realism, because she is a woman of good breeding,
and would naturally be the last to treat any man, distasteful or not,
with such excessive rudeness. I compelled him to go on and propose
to her, though after he had been at it for five minutes I could see
that he wished he was well out of it. I should have taken her in
hand and controlled her with equal firmness, declining to permit her
to speak so openly. Frankness is good enough, especially in women,
among whom you rarely find it; but frankness of the sort she indulged
in has no place in the polite circle in which she moves.
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