“Suited? Oh, no! I shall never be suited! It was a foolish quest,--and I ought to have known better!” His dark eyes sparkled mirthfully. “You see I had rather forgotten the fact that no woman cares to admit she is ‘of mature years,’--I had also forgotten the well-known male formula that ‘no woman can be trusted.’ However, I have only lost a few hundred francs in my advertising--so I have nothing to regret except my own folly.” “Had you many applications?” inquired Professor Chauvet. Dimitrius laughed. “Only one!” he answered, gaily. “And she was a poor lone lady who had lost all she thought worth living for. Of course she was--impossible!” “Naturally!” and the Professor nodded sagaciously--“She would be!” “What was she like?” asked Diana, with an amused look. “Like no woman I have ever seen!” replied Dimitrius, smiling quizzically at her. “Mature, and fully ripened in her opinions,--fairly obstinate, and difficult to get rid of.” “I congratulate you on having succeeded!” said Farnese. “Succeeded? In what way?” “In having got rid of her!” “Oh, yes! But--I don’t think she wanted to go!” “No woman ever wants to go if there’s a good-looking bachelor with whom she has any chance to stay!” said the Baron Rousillon, expanding his shirt front and smiling largely all round the table. “The ‘poor lone lady’ must have taken your rejection of her services rather badly.” “That’s the way most men would look at it,” replied Dimitrius. “But, my dear Baron, I’m afraid we are rather narrow and primitive in our ideas of the fair sex--not to say conceited. It is quite our own notion that _all_ women need us or find us desirable. Some women would much rather not be bored with us at all. One of the prettiest women I ever knew remained unmarried because, as she frankly said, she did not wish to be a housekeeper to any man or be bored by his perpetual company. There’s something in it, you know! Every man has his own particular ‘groove’ in which he elects to run--and in his ‘groove’ he’s apt to become monotonous and tiresome. That is why, when I advertised, I asked for a woman ‘of mature years,’--someone who had ‘settled down,’ and who would not find it wearisome to trot tamely alongside of _my_ special ‘groove,’ but of course it was very absurd on my part to expect to find a woman of that sort who was at the same time well-educated and clever.” “You should marry, my dear Dimitrius!--you should marry!” said the Baroness Rousillon, with a brilliant flash of her fine eyes and an encouraging smile.