"I shall never get back to where I was before," Prime asserted with cheerful dogmatism. Then, in a fresh burst of confidence: "Lucetta, I'm coming to suspect that I have always been the merest surface-skimmer. I thought I knew life a little, and was even brash enough to attempt to write about it. I thought I could visualize humanity and its possibilities, but what I saw was only the outer skin—of people and of things. But my greatest impertinence has been in my handling of women."
"Injustice?" she inquired.
"Not intentional; just crass ignorance. I know now that I was merely imitative, choosing for models the character-drawings of men who knew even less about women than I did. Vapid sentimentality was about as far as I could get. It revolts me to think of it now."
Her laugh was as unrestrained as that of a child. "You amuse me, Donald. Most women are hopelessly sentimental. Don't you know that?"
"You are not," he retorted soberly.
"How do you know?"
"Heavens and earth! if I haven't had an opportunity to find out——"
"You haven't," she returned quietly; "not the least little morsel of an opportunity. A few days ago we were thrown together—a man and a woman who were total strangers, to live or die as the chance might fall. I defy any one to be sentimental in such circumstances. Sentiment thrives only in the artificialities; they are the very breath of its life. If men and women could know each other as they really are, there would be fewer marriages, by far."
"And the few would be far happier," Prime put in.
"Do you think so? I doubt it very much."