I have led a life as regards women that I now think worse than idiotic. I have followed one after another of them, from pillar to post, falling madly in love, getting the blues, losing heart, all that sort of thing. I have never been intimately acquainted with a pure, honest girl of the better classes, except one.
"Was there ever another man who would put such things about himself in cold type?"
"But, listen," I said, defensively. "See what follows:
I need sadly to be educated by a woman who will not hold out temptation. I have an idea that a few months passed abroad, in the society of such a woman, will make another man of me.
"Marjorie, my life, I was right. It has made another man of me. I shall never be what I was before—never as long as I breathe."
She shook her head, half doubtfully, but declined to discuss the subject further. When she came to Hume's question, "What is to keep you from falling in love with your secretary?" she seemed troubled until she had received the answer I gave him, declaring that my "secretary" would be sent home with a month's advance wages if she allowed me to forget that I was merely her employer. Then she broke the rule we had adopted, and I could not blame her.
"You are evidently of a forgetful nature," she said. "The promise you made your friend does not agree with some of the foolish things you have tried to say to me."
"But, my angel, I had not met you when I made that assertion. I was speaking of an imaginary woman. Men are not expected to do impossible things. Besides, you do not realize how very ill I had been. I think we shall get on better if you will reserve your comments till the end of each chapter, when I shall be delighted to hear as many as you like."
She returned good naturedly to the machine, and recorded the balance of the chapter that is numbered two in this volume. When I said we had done enough for one day, she answered that she thought a little work in the afternoon would hurt neither of us; and that, for her part, she would be glad to begin again after lunch. It was plain that she was becoming interested and wanted to get on as fast as possible. Pleased at this, I consented to her plan. It was only half past eleven when she stopped and a rest of two or three hours would put us both right again.
"I don't think I realized you had been so terribly ill," she said, taking a rocker and placing herself at ease.