“Why not? I don’t set up to be an intellectual man—intellectual men are out of date; but I’m a brainy man, and I’d like to know how I’m to help being aware of the fact. I certainly don’t claim to be pretty, so you can’t say I’m actually wallowing in conceit.” Patience was forced to laugh. “Oh, you’d do very well if you’d exercise as much sense in regard to women as you do to affairs. Just answer me one question, will you? Are you so amazingly fascinating that women have the habit of succumbing at the end of the second interview?” “I never set up to be an ass.” “But your manner is quite assured. You seem very much surprised that I don’t tumble into your arms and say ‘Thank you.’ Oh, you New York men are so funny!” “Well, answer me one question—you don’t love your husband, do you?” “No, I don’t.” “Do you like me?” “I would if you wouldn’t make such an idiot of yourself. You certainly are very agreeable to talk to.” He came closer, his lids falling. The fine repose of his manner was a trifle ruffled. “Do you love anybody else?” he asked. “I do not.” “Then let me love you.” “I shall not.” “Then if you don’t love your husband and you like me and will not let me love you, you must have a lover.” Patience burst into brief hilarity. “Is that the logic of your kind?” “A beautiful woman that does not love her husband always loves another man.” “Or is willing to be loved by the first man that happens to have no other affair on hand.” “You have said that you like me.” “I didn’t say I loved you!” “I’d make you!” “Oh!” with a deep contempt he was incapable of understanding, “you couldn’t. But tell me another thing; I’m very curious. Has it never occurred to you that a woman must be wooed, that it is somewhat necessary to arouse sentiment and feeling in her before she is willing to advance one step? Why, you and your kind demand her off-hand in a way that is positively funny. What has become of all the old traditions?” “Oh, bother,” he said. “Life is too short to waste time on old-fashioned nonsense. If a man wants a woman he says so, and if she’s sensible and likes him she meets him half way. Men and women of the world know what they want.” “That is all there is to love then? It no longer means anything else whatever?” “Oh—you are all wrong. If you were not a spiritual woman I wouldn’t cross the room to win you. One can buy the other sort. It is your spirituality, your intellectuality, that fascinates me as much as your beauty.” “What do you know about spirituality?” she said contemptuously. “I don’t like to hear you speak the word. You desecrate it.” He flushed purple. “There are few things I don’t understand—and a good deal better than you do, perhaps.”