_He._ Well, on my confessing how far I had carried my flirtation with you-- I can't, for the life of me, tell how I happened to speak of it; I am usually more discreet. _She._ I should hope so. _He._ Oh, I am, I assure you; but the loves are so numerous, while I am but one, that they sometimes get the better of my discretion. What is one among so many? _She._ Oh, in this case, absolutely nothing. _He._ Thank you again. _She._ But to continue-- _He._ Well, to continue, Annie actually seemed to think that you had some sort of claim upon me. Fancy! _She._ She needn't have troubled. _He._ Oh, of course not. Why, I have offered myself to dozens of girls, with no more idea of marrying them than I have of becoming a howling dervish; and more than that, I have habitually been accepted. That is one thing about you that attracted me, do you know? There is a beautiful novelty about being rejected. _She._ So that is the secret of my amusing you, is it? You ought to have explained this to Annie. _He._ Oh, she wouldn't have understood. Like every other girl, 'twas the personal application that she was touched by. You see she didn't know the other girls, and she did know you; and she seems to think your no more binding than any other person's yes. Perhaps she knows that a woman's negative-- _She._ Really, Arthur, that's so hackneyed that if you haven't the gallantry not to say it you ought to be ashamed to repeat anything so stale. _He._ Perhaps you are right; I have known you to be on very rare occasions. However, Annie insisted that I should come, and, as she said, "assure myself of your sentiments and of my own." Did you ever hear anything more absurd? As if I didn't know, all the time, that you were dying for me; and as if I--despite my mad and overpowering passion for your lovely self, Miss Peltonville--couldn't tell as well in New York as in Cuba whether I wanted to marry her or not. _She._ If you were no better informed of your own sentiments than of mine, I don't wonder she doubted your conclusions. _He._ Oh, she didn't in the least. _She._ At least, Annie may set her mind quite at rest, so far as I am concerned. _He._ Thank you so much. It is such a relief to have things settled. _She._ What would you have done if I had accepted you? _He._ Oh, I was confident of my ability of putting the question so that you wouldn't. _She._ I have almost a mind to do it, even now. _He._ Really? _She._ Oh, don't be alarmed. There is one insuperable obstacle. _He._ What is that? _She._ Yourself. _He._ Then I am quite safe. That is a permanent one. _She._ Well, I wish Annie joy of her bargain. She is worthy of a better fate; and since we are talking frankly, I must say that what she can see in you I can't imagine. _He._ These things are so strange; there is no accounting for them. Why, I have been perfectly puzzled--do you know?--ever since I came last night, to tell what I found in you last winter.