“How could you like him unless he dared to lose all? If he is sure, the greater part of the compliment is absent. The greater the odds against him, the more it will hurt him to lose, the finer the honor he pays her.”
“Yet because he wants to win he must attend to every point. I only wish to defend him against your accessories imputation. There are kinds of courage you wouldn’t wish him to have. He may look an enemy in the eye, but he must not face the woman to whom he proposes if he wishes her to believe that he has a spark of sensibility. I once heard a man say that when he proposed he sat opposite a mirror. The brute!”
Miss Velrose’s cameo relaxed, and dissolved into a three-quarter view as her burning blue eyes turned toward me.
“Don’t!” I cried. “Don’t look at me that way, or I shall have to stop expounding! You prove that what I say is doubly true. Suppose she looked at him that way when he was in the middle of it?”
“Suppose that was part of her test?”
“Impossible! Not in that crisis. The presumption is that she has inflicted that at an earlier stage. To be sure, if she wants to pile on the agony there is no one to prevent her. Be honest—shouldn’t you be afraid to live with a man who could look you in the eye when he proposed? Should you expect him to anticipate composedly living with a girl who could look him in the eye when she answered him?”
Miss Velrose laughed softly. “What do you suppose Lady Mary Montagu meant when she said that women see men with their ears? Didn’t she mean that they listen too much? Didn’t she mean that we should go into matrimony with our eyes open?”
“I have not the presumption to analyze the cynicism of Lady Mary. She said some rather mean things about men. But let that go. You never could even imitate her. It isn’t at all in your line. I am sure of that or I shouldn’t tease you.”