"I can't say that I do," he answered slowly. "What moves one in any consideration of a situation of that kind is, in the first place, the standards of those that fall into it. Who, for instance, can scrape up any interest in the affairs of the abandoned? Or of those who look on irregular relations pretty much as they do on regular? People to enlist sympathy in their troubles must respect themselves."
The conversation drifted and Alice, within range of both tables, caught snatches of the talk at each. She presently heard Lottie Nelson speaking petulantly, and as if repeating a question to Kimberly. "What do men most like, Robert?" Alice could not see Kimberly's face, but she understood its expression so well that she could imagine the brows either luminously raised if Kimberly were interested, or patiently flat if he were not.
"You ought to know," she heard Kimberly answer. "You have been very successful in pleasing them."
"And failed where I have most wanted to succeed. Oh, no. I am asking you. What do they like?"
The answer halted. "I can't tell you. To me, of course, few men seem worth pleasing."
"What should you do to please a man, if you were a woman?"
"Nonsense."
"I'm asking purely out of curiosity," persisted Lottie. "I have failed. I realize it and I shall never try again. But at the end--I'd like to know."
"You probably would not agree with me," answered Kimberly after a silence, "most women would not. Perhaps it would fail with most men--but as I say, most men wouldn't interest me, anyway. If I had it to try, I would appeal to a man's highest nature."
"What is his highest nature?"