"Then why----"
"Because I want you to tell me, and because I only know a little. I don't know it all. I don't know why your mother objects to me, except that she doesn't approve of the introduction of St. Joseph. I don't know whether she's said you're not to see me again."
That look of amazement in her eyes was a just and fair reward for his simple hazard. Girls of twenty-one have mothers--more's the pity. He had only guessed it. And a mother who has a daughter of twenty-one has just reached that age when life lies in a groove and she would drag all within it if she could. She is forty-eight, perhaps, and knowing her husband as an obedient child knows its collect on a Sunday, she judges all men by him. Now, all men, fortunately for them, fortunately for everybody, are not husbands. Husbands are a type, a class by themselves; no other man is quite like them. They have irritating ways, and no wife should judge other men by their standards. When she would quarrel, theirs is the patience of Job. When she would be amiable, there is nothing to please them. They are seldom honest; they are scarcely ever truthful. For marriage will often bring out of a man the worst qualities that he has, as the washing-tub will sometimes only intensify the strain upon the linen.
In the back of his mind, John felt the unseen judgment of some woman upon him, and from this very standpoint. When he saw the look of amazement in Jill's eyes, he knew he was right.
"Why do you look so surprised?" he said, smiling.
"Because--well--why did you ask if you knew?"
"Do you think I should ask if I didn't know?"
"Wouldn't you?"
"Oh, no. It's no good asking a woman questions when you don't know, when you haven't the faintest idea of what her answer is going to be. She knows very well just how ignorant you are and, by a subtle process of the mind, she superimposes that ignorance upon herself. And if you go on asking her direct questions, there comes a moment when she really doesn't know either. Then she makes it up or tells you she has forgotten. Isn't that true?"
She watched him all the time he spoke. He might have been talking nonsense. He probably was; but there seemed to be some echo of the truth of it far away in the hidden recesses of her mind. She seemed to remember many times when just such a process had taken place within her. But how had he known that, when she had never realised it before?