“You mean I care for him?”
“I don’t know anything about that, but you’re glad he cares for you.”
“You’re utterly mistaken.”
“How would you feel if another woman came and took him away from you to-morrow?”
“Took him away from me?” cried Christine, in a tone of surprise that made Riatt laugh aloud.
“That’s the wonderful thing about the so-called weaker sex,” he said. “Saying ‘no’ seems to have no terrors to them at all. The timidest girl will refuse a man with no more trouble and anxiety than she would expend on refusing a dinner invitation; whereas men, with all their vaunted courage, are absolutely at the mercy of a determined woman. I have a friend who has just married a girl—whom he three times explicitly refused—only because she asked him to.”
Miss Fenimer looked at him thoughtfully.
“Surely you exaggerate,” she said.
He shook his head sadly.
“I wish I did,” he returned, “but I assure you that is the great secret—that any man would rather marry any woman than refuse her to her face. You see, no graceful way for a man to say ‘no’ has ever been discovered.”