"But you did." "I merely meant that you should infer----" "I inferred it all right," he said bitterly. Perplexed, not knowing how to encounter such an unexpected reproach, vaguely distressed by it, she instinctively attempted to clear herself. "Please listen. I hadn't any idea of mortifying you by explaining that you are not qualified by nature to interest the modern woman in----" He turned a bright red. "Do you suppose such a condemnation--such a total ostracism--is agreeable to a man? . . . Is there anything worse you can say about a man than to inform him that no woman could possibly take the slightest interest in him?" "I didn't say that. I said the modern woman----" "You're all modern." "It is reported that there are still a few women sufficiently old-fashioned to----" "They don't interest me." He looked up at her. "What _you've_ said has--simply--and completely--spoiled--my life," he said slowly. "What _I_ said?" "Yes." "What have--what could--what I--how--where--who is----" and she checked herself, eyes on his. "Yes," he repeated with a curious sort of satisfaction, "you have spoiled my entire life for me." "What an utterly--what a wildly absurd and impossible----" "And you _know_ it!" he insisted, with gloomy triumph. "Know what?" "That you've spoiled----" "Stop! Will you explain to me how----" "Is it necessary?" "Necessary? Of course it is! You have made a most grave and serious and--and heartless charge against a woman----" "Yes, a heartless one--against you!" "I? _Heartless?_" "Cold, deliberate, cruel, unfeeling, merciless, remorseless----" "Mr. Langdon!" "Didn't you practically tell me that no woman could endure the sight of a face and figure like mine?" "No, I did not. What a--a cruel accusation!" "What _did_ you mean, then?" "That--that you are not exactly--qualified to--to become an ancestor of the physically perfect race which----" "What _is_ wrong with me, then?" She looked at him helplessly. "What do you mean?" "I mean where am I below proof? Where am I lacking? What points count me out?" Her sensitive underlip began to tremble. "I--I don't want to criticise you----" she faltered. "Please do. I beg of you. There are beauty doctors in town," he added earnestly. "They can fix up a fellow--and I can go to a gymnasium, and take up deep-breathing and----" "But, Mr. Langdon, do _you_ want to--to be--captured----" He looked into her bright and melting eyes. "Yes," he said. "I'd like to give you another chance at me." "Me? After what I did to you?" "Will you?" "Why, what a perfectly astonishing----" "Not very. Look me over and tell me what points count against me. I know I'm not good-looking, but I'd like to go into training for the bench--I mean----" "Mr. Langdon," she said slowly, "surely _you_ would not care to develop the featureless symmetry and the--the monotonous perfection necessary to----"