George Barr McCutcheon

“ Perhaps you don't realize what feverish, exclamatory, foolish things girls are. They don't know how to be honest with the men they love, and they wouldn't if they did. You are little short of an idiot, Monty Brewster, if you believed the things she said rather than the things she looked."
And Peggy, fiery and determined and defiantly unhappy, threw down her cards and escaped so that she might not prove herself tearfully feminine. She left Brewster still heavily enveloped in melancholy; but she left him puzzled. He began to wonder if Barbara Drew did have something in the back of her mind. ”

“ How could any girl be happy with a man like that? And, after all, one must look out for one's own fate."
"Undoubtedly," replied Peggy, but many thoughts were dashing through her brain.
"Shall we turn back to the cottage?" she said, after an awkward silence.
"You certainly don't approve of Mr. Brewster's conduct?" Barbara did not like to be placed in the wrong, and felt that she must endeavor to justify herself. "He is the most reckless of spendthrifts, we know, and he probably indulges in even less respectable excitement." ”

“ And in Brewster's face Peggy seemed to read that for her martyrdom was the only wear. Bravely she put it on.
"Monty, I forget nothing that I really know. But this is a case in which you are quite wrong. Where is your sporting blood? You have never fought a losing fight before, and you can't do it now. You have lost your nerve, Monty. Don't you see that this is the time for an aggressive campaign?" Somehow she was not saying things at all as she had planned to say them. And his gloom weighed heavily upon her. "You don't mind, do you, Monty," she added, more softly, "this sort of thing from me? ”