"You would not."
"I've always thought Muriel a finished flirt, yet you say she's cold——"
"Flirts are," declared Elizabeth's lover. "Er ... I've heard that the true drunkard dislikes the actual taste of spirits. Well! The true flirt hates the actual idea of ... er ... Love."
He blushed as if with unconquerable shyness, but went on: "Do you know how the Muriel-type looks upon a kiss? As something to be got out of ... er ... or got over."
"I wonder," said I.
"I know," said he. "Plenty of them, the Mystery-girls."
"Why 'Mystery,' Colonel Fielding?"
"Because it is a mystery why they're made like that. Avid for what they call 'a good time'—they who can't taste the real good times!"
"You mean the times like—like that tea we had in the hayfield; that lunch of your mother's with her old love."
—"And so forth. Yes ... Ah, how they surround themselves with every outward sign of 'a good time,' how they swallow them up into that gap that can never be filled in their hearts. I remember one Mystery-girl—but I'm talking too much."