'But they're always marrying Englishmen. So how do you explain that? I did think you'd be able to tell me about the American women.'
'Perhaps I haven't met enough of just the right sort,' he said.
'You're too critical,' she remarked, as though his case was a peculiarly interesting one and she was studying it on its merits.
'You only say that because I'm over forty and unmarried, Mrs. Stanway. I'm not at all critical.'
'Over forty!' she exclaimed, and left a pause. He nodded. 'But you are too critical,' she went on. 'It isn't that women don't interest you—they do——'
'I should think they did,' he murmured, gratified.
'But you expect too much from them.'
'Look here!' he said, 'how do you know?'
She smiled with an assumption of the sadness of all knowledge; she made him feel like a boy again: 'If you didn't expect too much from them, you would have married long ago. It isn't as if you hadn't seen the world.'
'Seen the world!' he repeated. 'I've never seen anything half so charming as your home, Mrs. Stanway.'