"You don't know! Do you suppose a girl with position, wealth and brains turns up every day in the week? A girl who really wants you! I'm sure I can't imagine why she does."
"Nor can I."
She repeated her question. Had he given Charlotte Beecher up merely because she loved him so much more than he loved her?
He couldn't very well answer this question in the affirmative. So he said:
"Charlotte is a very intellectual girl, the most intellectual girl I know. She never met a man whom she regarded as her equal in point of brains until she met me. The regard was mutual. She mistook her admiration for love. I might have made the same mistake—if I hadn't met you."
"You can't blarney me, Cato," she said, highly flattered none the less. "It's too late in the day!"
"I mean it, Cornelia. Meeting you, made me alive to the full force of the attraction between the sexes."
"It is the one thing needful," said Cornelia, in low siren tones. "For without it, love is as the dry stubble."
"I, too, used to think so," replied Robert, turning a cold douche on this sentiment. "We've all had that notion rammed down our throats since childhood. But can we be certain that sexual attraction is the only road to love? The poets assure us that pity is a famous short-cut. In the case of very young people, all roads seem to lead to love. For older folk, mutual admiration may be as good a road as any. Speaking for myself, I'm still considering a proposal to Charlotte Beecher—"
"Oh, you're still considering her? And Janet is still considering M. St. Hilaire. For ice-cold calculation, give me a one-hundred per cent enthusiast like you or Janet."