“Correct. You have a woman-hating nature. You don’t warm up to women very much. That acts as a challenge and keeps them coming. Do you do that on purpose?”
“I don’t hate ’em, boy,” he contradicted. “But I find they are very uncertain beings. Take this Freeman girl. Why, you’d travel fifteen days before you’d find another brain like hers, Max. She’s like a steel-trap with the real snap to it. If she doesn’t quite ‘savez’ what you’re talking about, she lights right into your remark, like an expert surgeon with a knife, and dissects it down to the heart. Then, having established your meaning, she frames her reply with the greatest care.... My God!”
“What’s wrong?”
“You’d think she was being interviewed by a reporter. She’s so precise about giving you her real, unbiased, judicial opinion. Whew! That brain of hers! It’s wonderful, wonderful. I wish I had her brains, Max. A memory like a photograph album. Just turn it up, see? A judgment as deft as Solomon’s—a good judgment—nothing leaks out of it—every point receives due weight. She’s different. She speaks differently from most people. You never know what she’s going to say. In fact, you can be sure she won’t say what any other girl would say. Suppose you were to ask an average girl how she likes playing cards, what would you expect her to say?”
“Oh, she might say ‘I adore cards,’ or ‘I’m not especially keen,’ or ‘I’d like to play them with you in a cosy nook,’ and so forth, ad nauseam.”
“Well, you’d never guess what she said. I asked her if she liked cards. She said, ‘That all depends on the cards. If they’re very new and slippery, I could sit for hours sliding them through my fingers; but if they stick the least bit they make me shiver.’ That’s only one example. I asked her what her aim in life was.”
“You did?”
“Yes.”
“You impertinent rascal! Nobody does that.”
“Why not?”