He had said it without consciousness of magnanimity. There was nothing magnanimous about stating the truth according to his code of honor. He was seeing the bleak look that would come into Braithwaite's face should he hear of this happening. He was wondering whether Braithwaite possessed the insight into feminine strategy not to take offense, but to interpret it as surrender.
Terry was speaking again. "My dear Maisie, if ever you get to know Lord Taborley, you'll learn to have a better opinion of him. He plays with all his cards on the table. I think most men play like that. It's we women who cheat and carry spare aces and revoke when the game's going against us." Then came her amazing burst of frankness, "Like you did when, to suit your own purpose, you pretended that we were on the point of becoming engaged. Like I did when I told that story just now about Steely Jack. And again like you've done all along in your dealings with Adair. Why, even now, when you're ready to give him up, you can't play the cards that are on the table; you have to try to borrow Lord Taborley from me. Don't get angry. I'm not accusing you especially. We women are all
the same; there's not one of us who can stick to the rules of the game." Her glance shifted to Tabs. "You used to think that I was the exception. You see, I'm not. The wonder is that men can even pretend to respect us."
Long after she had finished and the conversation had taken a new turn, she went on gazing at him, raising and lowering her eyes as she ate her lunch, begging him to understand.
"You're wrong, Terry." In her capacity as hostess, Maisie was making an attempt to get away from personalities. She was too convicted by what had been said to consider it wise to defend herself. "You're wrong. Men don't want to respect us. They love us for having faults that they wouldn't tolerate in themselves. They encourage us to cultivate them. It flatters their integrity to discover our dishonesties. They like to believe that we're cowards. They don't expect us to tell the truth. They almost resent our having a sense of honor. The woman who cheats at every turn and then cries in their arms when she's found out, is the kind of woman who always has a man to take care of her. Look at my sister, Lady Dawn. She's never been known to cry. She's missed everything in life through being almost repellently honorable."
In the discussion that followed Tabs took no part, though he was often appealed to for an opinion. As he listened to their modulated flow of voices, their refined and gentle intonations, their evasive, slyly uttered words, he began to have an understanding of what was taking place. It was something primitive
—the oldest of all battles. Neither of them wanted him, but each was prompted to covet the pretense of his possession. Their hunting instincts were aroused. He had taken on a sudden value in their eyes because each had discovered that the other was in pursuit of him.
His thoughts went back to Lady Dawn—to her pale aloofness. She wasn't like this—she was different from all other women. It was ridiculous that he should be so sure that she was different when his only proof was a portrait, quite certainly idealized. He began to argue with himself again as to whether he ought to seek her out and endanger her serenity by telling her about Lord Dawn. It would be useless to confide such intentions to Maisie. He would obtain no help from her. She could conceive of no sympathy between a man and woman into which sex did not enter. The thought of sex in connection with Lady Dawn seemed an impertinence.
The discussion went on. Luncheon was at an end. Coffee had been served. Cigarettes were being lighted. Again and again he was referred to. Did he think this and didn't he agree to that? Wasn't this true of the way in which men regarded women? Their differences of opinion seemed so trivial. Their views so immature and amateurish. He watched them with curious, brooding attention. They were so nobly tender in their outward forms. He appreciated the grace of their gestures, the fine-boned smallness of their bodies, the delicacy of their molding, the tendril thinness of their fingers, the sagacity of their tiny aristocratic heads, the seduction of
their soft red mouths, the poetry of the fringe of golden lashes in which the pathos of their eyes hung enmeshed—their intrusive, penetrating frailty, which supplicated, denounced and astounded. They were so weak and yet so strong. A man could crush them with one arm. But they could slay a man's soul with their sweetness. They were equipped in every detail by their pale perfection to quicken and to disappoint. To disappoint! That was what they had been trying to persuade him for the past half-hour—that they were Nature's traps, cunningly contrived and baited. The Philistines be upon thee, Samson! Their self-traductions were undermining his faith in all sacredness.