"And what did I say about Frances?"
"You said things about Frances that made her tremble."
"Tremble? What a brute, and you waiting on me day and——"
"Hush," she broke in. "Tremble because I am just a woman and not an angel, just a woman and not a star. We women are mortals just as you men are. Sometimes we're fools as well as mortals, just as you men are; but I don't think we're knaves quite so often, because we're denied the opportunity and hedged about and not tempted."
As she gently stripped away the pretty hypocrisies with which lovers delude themselves and lay up store for disappointment, I began to discount that old belief about truth and knowledge rendering a woman mannish and arrogant and assertive.
"You men marry women, expecting them to be angels, and very often the angel's highest ambition is to be considered a doll. Then your hope goes out and your faith——"
"But, Frances," I cried, "if any sensible man had his choice of an angel and a fair, good woman——"
"Be sure to say fair, or he'd grumble because he hadn't a doll," she laughed.
"No levity! If he had choice of angels and stars and a good woman, he'd choose the woman. The star is mighty far away and cold and steely. The angel's a deal too perfect to know sympathy with faults and blunders. I tell you, Little Statue, life is only moil and toil, unless love transmutes the base metal of hard duty into the pure gold of unalloyed delight."
"That's why I tremble. I must do more than angel or star! Oh, Rufus, if I can only live up to what you think I am—and you can live up to what I think you are, life will be worth living."