"Do you want to?" he pursued the inquiry in a detached, impersonal tone.
"I don't know," she repeated soberly. "I like Tommy a lot. When I'm with
him I feel sure I'd be perfectly happy to be always with him. When I'm
away from him, I'm not so sure."
"In other words," Carr observed slowly, "your reason and your emotions
are not in harmony on that subject. Eh? So far as Tommy Ashe goes, your
mind and your body pull you two different ways."
She looked at him a little more keenly.
"Perhaps," she said. "I know what you mean. But I don't clearly see why
it should be so. Either I love Tommy Ashe, or I don't, and I should know
which, shouldn't I? The first and most violent manifestation of love is
mostly physical, isn't it? I've always understood that. You've pointed
it out. I do like Tommy. Why should my mind act as a brake on my
feelings?"
"Because you happen to be made the way you are," Carr returned
thoughtfully. "As I've told you a good many times, you've grown up a
good deal different from the common run of girls. We've been isolated.
Lacking the time-occupying distractions and pleasures of youth in a more
liberal environment, Sophie, you've been thrown back on yourself and me
and books, and as a result you've cultivated a natural tendency to
think. Most young women don't. They're seldom taught any rational
process of arriving at conclusions. You have developed that faculty. It
has been my pride and pleasure to cultivate in you what I believed to be
a decided mentality. I've tried to show you how to get down to
fundamentals, to work out a philosophy of life that's really workable.
Knowledge is worth having for its own sake. Once you find yourself in
contact with the world--and for you that time is bound to come--you'll
apply all the knowledge you've absorbed to problems as they arise. If
there's a rational solution to any situation that faces you, you'll make
an effort to find that solution. You'll do it almost instinctively. You
can't help it. Your brain is too alert ever to let you act blindly. At
the present your lack of experience probably handicaps you a little. In
human relations you have nothing much but theory, got from the books
you've digested and the way we've always discussed every possible angle
of life. Take Tommy Ashe. He's practically the first young, attractive
white man you've ever met, the very first possibility as a lover.
Tommy's a nice boy, a pleasant, sunny-natured young fellow. Personally
he's just the sort of fellow that would sweep a simple country girl
clean off her feet. With you, your mind, as you just put it, acts as a
brake on your feelings. Can't you guess why?"