A Time When Cynicism Is Not Enough

“No. And I resent — ” she stopped herself. She leaned forward, her head a little to one side, her lips not quite meeting, and looked at him. I watched her with pleasure. I suppose she was telling the truth when she said she didn’t try to be a special kind of woman, but she didn’t have to try. There was something in her — not only in her face, it came right out through her clothes — that gave you an instinctive impulse to start in that direction. I kept on being cynical, but it was easy to appreciate that there might be a time when cynicism wouldn’t be enough.
— Archie Goodwin, in Rex Stout, Too Many Cooks, 1938, Chapter 9