"I meant men--not girls," he said. "Girls are different. Not that some of them don’t fall in and out of love rather easily, but they only do it as a sort of pleasant emotional exercise. The average male lover, however youthful, means business all the time. Quite right, too! It is a healthy masculine instinct for an Englishman to want to found a household of his own just as soon as he grows up. But it is this very instinct which often sends him after the wrong girl. He is full of natural affection and sentiment, and so on, and he wants some one to pour it out upon. So he picks out the first nice girl he meets, endows her in his mind with all the virtues, and tries to marry her. Usually it comes to nothing--the girl sees to that; for she is gifted by nature with a power of selection denied to men--and in any case it is hardly likely that he will meet the right girl straight off. So he goes on seeking for his mate, this child of nature, in a groping, instinctive sort of way, until at last he finds his pearl of great price. Then he sells all that he has, which being interpreted means that he straightway forgets all about every other girl he ever knew, and loves his Pearl forever and ever. Therefore, Tilly, if ever a man comes to you and tells you that you are the only girl he ever loved, trust him not. It is not likely. It is against nature." "A girl likes to believe it, all the same, dear," answered Tilly, voicing an age-long truth. "I don’t see why she should," argued the ingenious Dicky. "It is no compliment to be loved by a man who has had no experience. Now _I_ can love and appreciate you properly, because I am able to compare you with about"--he counted upon his fingers, finally having recourse to a supplementary estimate on his waistcoat-buttons--"with about fourteen other ladies, of all ages, whom I have admired at one time and another; and can unhesitatingly place you in Class One, Division One, all by your own dear self, so far as they are concerned. Is n’t that something?" But Tilly was not quite satisfied. "I should like to feel," she said, instinctively giving utterance to that point of view which makes a woman’s love such an intensely personal and jealously exacting thing in comparison with a man’s, "that you could never have been happy with any woman in the world but me. Could you, Dicky?" Dicky pondered.