"Yes, I suppose so. I was engaged once; you know girls instinctively engage themselves to some one whom they fancy; they imagine themselves in love, and it is a pleasant fallacy. My engagement might have gone on forever, if he had contented himself with a mere engagement. He was a young army officer stationed miles and miles away. We wrote volumes of letters to each other--and they were clever letters; it was rather like a seaside novelette, our love affair. He was lonely, or restless, or something, and pressed his case. Then Mama and Gene--those ideal lovers--put their feet down and would none of it." "And you?" "Of course I felt perfectly wretched for a whole week, and imagined myself cruelly abused. You see he was a foreigner, without money; he was heir to a title, but that would have brought him no advantages in the household." "You recovered. What became of him?" "I never learned. He seemed to fade away into thin air. I fear I was not very much in love." "I wonder if all girls are like you--if they forget so easily?" "You have yourself declared that the majority have neither form nor feature; perhaps they have no feeling. How do men feel about a broken engagement?" "I can only speak for myself. There was a time when I felt that marriage was the inevitable fate of all respectable people. Some one wanted me to marry a certain some one else. I didn't seem to care much about it; but my friend was one of those natural-born match-makers; she talked the young lady up to me in such a shape that I almost fancied myself in love and actually began to feel that I'd be doing her an injustice if I permitted her to go on loving and longing for the rest of her days. So one day I wrote her a proposal; it was the kind of proposal one might decline without injuring a fellow's feelings in the least--and she did it!" After a thoughtful pause he continued: "By Jove! But wasn't I immensely relieved when her letter came; such a nice, dear, good letter it was, too, in which she assured me there had evidently been a mistake somewhere, and nothing had been further from her thoughts than the hope of marrying me. So she let me down most beautifully----" "And offered to be a sister to you?" "Perhaps; I don't remember now; I always felt embarrassed after that when her name was mentioned. I couldn't help thinking what an infernal ass I'd made of myself." "It was all the fault of your friend." "Of course it was; I'd never have dreamed of proposing to her if I hadn't been put up to it by the match-maker. Oh, what a lot of miserable marriages are brought on in just this way! You see when I like a girl ever so much, I seem to like her too well to marry her. I think it would be mean of me to marry her." "Why?"