“Well, it’s a pity you were not a woman. Looks are wasted in a man. Give a man a ready tongue and a taking manner, and he can usually get what he wants, if he’s as ugly as a frog. With you, on the other hand, things will come too easily. You will miss all the fun of the chase. On my soul I’m sorry for you.”
“The briefs don’t come anyway, nor the ‘oof’: that’s all I can see to be sorry for.”
“You don’t want them badly enough, that’s all. If you want the one, you’ll make love to an influential woman who can get them, and if you want the other, you’ll marry an heiress.”
“I say, you’re giving me rather a rotten character, aren’t you?”
He faced her suddenly, and a new expression dawned in his eyes, as if he were only just awakening to the fact that she was beautiful.
“Do you really think I’m such a rotter as all that?”
She glanced away, lowering her eyelids, so that her long lashes swept the warm olive cheeks, and with a little callous shrug answered:
“Why should you be a rotter for doing what all the rest of the world does? Four-fifths of mankind would give anything for your chances.”
“But you just said you were sorry for me?”
“So I am. So I should be for the four-fifths of mankind, if they got all they wanted just for the asking.”