Further to enliven those days, I permitted Jim to give her lessons in believing everything. When I told her of this, she said, "I need them, I'm so out of practice." That was the nearest we had come to touching upon the interview of a certain afternoon. I should not have considered this a forbidden topic, but her shyness became pitiful at any seeming approach to it. "Jim will put you right again," I assured her. And I believe he did, though it was not easy to persuade him that she could be morally recognized when I was by. The occasion on which he first remained crouching at her feet while I walked away was regarded by Miss Kate as a personal triumph. She was so childishly open of her pleasure at this that I did not tell her it was a mere trick of mine; that I had told him to charge when he sprang up. She knew his eyes so little as to think he displayed regard for rather than respect for my command. She could not see that he begged me piteously to know _why_ he must crouch there at a couple of strange inconsequential feet and see the good world go suddenly wrong. Still further, to make those days not bad days, Miss Kate would cross our little common ground of an early evening to where I played the game on my porch. Often I did this until dusk obscured the faces of the cards. I faintly suspected in the course of these bird-like visits a caprice in Miss Kate to know what it might be that I preferred to the society of her mother on her own porch. She appeared to be more curious than interested. She promptly made those observations which the unillumined have ever considered it witty to make concerning those who play at solitaire. But, finding that I had long ceased to be moved by these, she was friendly enough to judge the game upon its merits. That she judged it to be stupid was neither strange nor any reflection upon the fairness of her mind. The game--in those profounder, rarer aspects which alone dignify it--is not for women. I believe that the game of cards to teach them philosophy under defeat, respect for the inevitable and a cheerful manipulation of such trifling good fortune as may befall--instead of that wild, womanish demand for all or nothing--has yet to be invented. I predict of this game, moreover, if ever it be found, that it will be a game at which two, at least, must play. Rarely have I known a woman, however rigid her integrity otherwise, who would not brazenly amend or even repeal utterly those decrees of Fate which are symbolized by the game. She desires intensely to win, and she will not be above shifting a card or two in contravention of the known rules. Far am I from intimating that this puts upon her the stigma of moral delinquency. It is mere testimony, rather, to her astounding capacity for self-deception. And this I cannot believe to be other than gracious of influence upon the intricate muddle of human association.