"Inconstancy! I'm not inconstant. I never saw a girl I liked better than Stephanie. I'm not likely to. But that doesn't mean that I want to marry her--" "For shame!" "Nonsense! Why do you talk about inconstancy? It's a ridiculous word. What is constancy in love? Either an accident or a fortunate state of mind. To promise constancy in love is promising to continue in a state of mind over which your will has no control. It's never an honest promise; it can be only an honest hope. Love comes and goes and no man can stay it, and no man is its prophet. Coming unasked, sometimes undesired, often unwelcome, it goes unbidden, without reason, without logic, as inexorably as it came, governed by laws that no man has ever yet understood--" "Louis!" exclaimed his sister, bewildered; "what in the world are you lecturing about? Why, to hear you expound the anatomy of love--" He began to laugh, caught her hands, and kissed her: "Little goose, that was all impromptu and horribly trite and commonplace. Only it was new to me because I never before took the trouble to consider it. But it's true, even if it is trite. People love or they don't love, and a regard for ethics controls only what they do about it." "That's another Tupperesque truism, isn't it, dear?" "Sure thing. Who am I to mock at the Proverbial One when I've never yet evolved anything better?... Listen; you don't want me to marry Stephanie, do you?" "Yes, I do." "No, you don't. You think you do--" "I do, I do, Louis! She's the sweetest, finest, most generous, most suitable--" "Sure," he said, hastily, "she's all that except 'suitable'--and she isn't that, and I'm not, either. For the love of Mike, Lily, let me go on admiring her, even loving her in a perfectly harmless--" "It _isn't_ harmless to caress a girl--" "Why--you can't call it caressing--" "What do you call it?" "Nothing. We've always been on an intimate footing. She's perfectly unembarrassed about--whatever impulsive--er--fugitive impulses--" "You _do_ kiss her!" "Seldom--very seldom. At moments the conditions happen accidentally to--suggest--some slight demonstration--of a very warm friendship--" "You positively sicken me! Do you think a nice girl is going to let a man paw her if she doesn't consider him pledged to her?" "I don't think anything about it. Nice girls have done madder things than their eulogists admit. As a plain matter of fact you can't tell what anybody nice is going to do under theoretical circumstances. And the nicer they are the bigger the gamble--particularly if they're endowed with brains--" "_That's_ cynicism. You seem to be developing several streaks--"