"Possibly," returned Mrs Chadwick calmly, "if I had been brought up with John I would not have adventured either. Familiarity with a person's prejudices makes one diffident. I am not laying myself out to please Mr Musgrave, but to modernise him, as you suggested. When he is sufficiently modernised I mean to marry him." "You will need to obtain a divorce first," retorted Mrs Sommers, laughing. "And I am sure John would not consider that respectable." "You have a mischievous habit of misrepresenting things. You know perfectly well that I am satisfied with my lot in life. I am going to find him a wife." "Oh?" said Mrs Sommers. She looked thoughtful. "I think you will have in that a more difficult task than in bringing him up to date." "We shall see," returned Mrs Chadwick, and her tone was confident. "I think myself that lack of opportunity has bred the disinclination. No man is born a bachelor. The state, which is a misfit, results from his circumstances." "It isn't due to lack of opportunity in John's case," Belle asserted. "The women who have run after him!..." "Yes," said Mrs Chadwick. She was thinking of Miss Simpson. "But that sort of woman doesn't count, my dear." The successful married woman has, as a rule, a very good idea of the kind of women men like. The successful married woman is never the vain woman. The vain woman always imagines that the type she represents is the type men admire; usually she is at fault. Mrs Chadwick was not a vain woman. She knew very well that all men are not drawn towards the same type of woman. Some men prefer looks; others mental qualities; and, by an odd inconsistency in human nature, the perfectly simple-souled and self-disciplined man inclines naturally toward the woman endowed with the captivating wickedness of her sex. There is a big distinction between captivating wickedness and vice. No man, whether he be good or bad in principle, admires vice in the mothers of the race. Since Mr Musgrave reckoned in the category of the simple, self-disciplined soul, plainly the woman for him must have a spice of wickedness in her. Mrs Chadwick may have been mistaken in her deduction, but at least she believed in it firmly.