Now, however, there could no longer be any question of prolonging the situation indefinitely. The only problem that occupied his mind was, when and how to say that word to Leonetta which was to bind her for ever to him, before she receded one hundredth of an inch from the summit of ecstasy to which he imagined she too must have climbed in the last few days. Thus he had been moved by a thought similar to Guy Tyrrell's; but there, as we shall see, the likeness ceased. A girl of seventeen or eighteen is nearly always in danger when a man of thirty pays attention to her,--in danger, that is to say, of acquiescing too soon, too early in life, too unreflectedly and ignorantly. Leonetta had been intoxicated by Denis Malster's worship. It would perhaps be unscientific here, and therefore untrue, to overlook the fact that the conquest of her sister's beau, had been in itself a triumphant achievement, apart from any particular claims he might have to attraction. But is not human nature such that in any case it is always partially subdued by devotion? Does not even the love of an animal make an irresistible appeal to the most callous? Is not the common preference for dogs before cats in England, largely ascribable to the fact that the flattery residing in devotion and affection makes such an impelling appeal to all vain people, that the superior animal is discarded for the inferior? The dog is grossly and offensively obscene; he is dirty, he pollutes our streets; he is a coward, and has the pusillanimous spirit of a rather faint-hearted lackey. The cat, on the other hand, is decent, clean, consistently sanitary, brave, and possessed of the great-hearted self-reliant spirit of a born warrior. The cat, however, does not fawn, it does not flatter, it shows no devotion, it knows none of the sycophantic wiles of the dog; but since modern mankind in England is animated chiefly by vanity, the dog with all his objectionable characteristics and habits is preferred. Now women, though by no means alone in the possession of vanity, are perhaps a little more subject than men to its sway, and it is precisely their vanity which is their greatest danger. Like the modern Englishman, they all too frequently overlook the noble for the inferior animal, because the latter is a better worshipper, and, particularly when they are still in their teens, worship from the male, which is something so novel, so exquisitely strange, and so stimulating to their self-esteem, constitutes one of the greatest pitfalls they can encounter. Why should it necessarily be a pitfall? Precisely because it may induce them to decide too soon in favour of an inferior man. Leonetta was therefore in danger, and Lord Henry knew it.