“I’m damned if I want strange women careering all over the house in their wrappers,” he said with well-simulated peevishness.
“Bosh!” exclaimed Phyllis. “There’s nothing you’d like better. Unless without their wrappers.”
“What’s the use of being vulgar?” he said. He thought: How gorgeous Phyllis is. You can’t fool her.
Poor old George, thought Phyllis. I believe he imagines that he’s attractive to women. But I won’t say that to him, he’s in such a stew already.
“Miss Clyde is one of the most truly refined people I ever met.”
This didn’t quite succeed. Phyllis was always annoyed when George attempted to bunco her. He was so transparent.
“I believe you imagine you’re attractive to women,” she said.
“Hell,” he said, “I don’t even take time to think about it.”
“If that were true, you’d be much more so.”
If I’d finished this cursed booklet, he thought, I’d take a little time off and be attractive to women, just to surprise her. Why, damnation, I could even make Phyl fall in love with me if it was worth taking the trouble. The way to please women is to show them that you know they’re not happy. And that their special kind of unhappiness is a particularly subtle and lonely one, but curable by sympathy. But it’s better not to think about these things at all. It’s queer to think of all the people in the world, and how troubled they are when they look each other straight in the eyes. If I knew why that is, I’d know everything. The devil of it is, women have begun to think. That’s why everything is so uneasy. Why even Phyllis has begun to think. I mustn’t let her, because she’s too fond of being comfortable. It’ll only upset her. She must be kept amused. That’s the beauty of money, it’s a substitute for thinking. It can surround you with delightful distractions. It’s like women, too: it comes to the fellows who know how to entertain it. I must learn how to be attractive to money.