Isabel smiled. "Don't go; we're not disturbed."
"I was considering myself."
"O, you were!"
"Such things shock me, but if I may smoke I may be able—"
"Of course. Smoke and tell me what you think of Rose. Isn't it strange how that girl gets on? She's one of the women born to win her way without effort. It isn't true to say it is physical; that's only part of it—it's temperament."
Mason got his cigar well alight before he said:
"She has the prime virtue—imagination."
"Is that a woman's prime virtue?"
"To me it is. Of course there are other domestic and conjugal virtues which are commonly ranked higher, but they are really subordinate. Sappho and Helen and Mary of the Scots were not beautiful nor virtuous, as such terms go; they had imagination, and imagination gave them variety, and variety means endless charm. It is decidedly impossible to keep up your interest in a woman who is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow—whose orbit can be predicted, whose radiance is without the shadow of turning."
"Should he be stopped?" Isabel asked of Sanborn.