"Marriage is a very different thing between men and women and between boys and girls," he said in a tone of good-humoured cynicism. "When a full-grown man and woman marry, I have often noticed they assume a defensive attitude, one to the other; it is best in the long run. Of course, they don't admit it--everything in this blessed country is on the basis of the slightest sentiment--but it is a fact just the same."
Alicia smiled and answered:
"I don't think that American men have ever been on the defensive with women."
"Quite true in a way," answered Colegrove. "My interest in the subject is purely academic. I was married at nineteen to a pink-cheeked girl three years older than myself. We found out our mistake at the end of a few years. I am not a brute and I am willing to give her everything she wants, but she doesn't know what she wants. Sometimes she thinks it's a divorce, but as soon as I agree to it she finds out that she doesn't want it at all. Of course," continued Colegrove, rising and walking about the room, "the time may come when I shall meet a woman who will mean a good deal to me. So far, however, not one of them has been able to make any impression on me as deep as the action of the Board of Directors of the A.F.& O. Railroad. If you don't mind my saying it, however, now that it is too late, I was very much impressed by you. Your type, you know, is very unusual."
Yes; Alicia Vernon knew that her type was very unusual and never in her life had her pride and self-love been more flattered than by Colegrove's frank and debonair admission.
"However," he said, coming and standing before her, "it won't keep me from being friends with Senator March; he is a very strong man in every way, and I hope you will let me be a friend of yours, too. Recollect, if you ever get into a financial tangle, I can give you some good advice."
"I have been in a financial tangle all my life," murmured Alicia, "but now that is past."
"Not if you have been in it all your life, my dear lady; those things are matters of temperament and bear a very indirect relation to the rise and fall of one's income. That's one thing in which I have been always very indulgent towards women. Very few of them have any real idea of the value of money, and the charming and beautiful among them should have it just as they should have plenty of air and sunlight."
This sentiment was peculiarly acceptable to Alicia Vernon.
Colegrove remained twenty minutes longer, and when he left Alicia reflected that in him was embodied that American type of which she had heard so much--men who can deny nothing to women.