"Or an interest in another woman," added the widow promptly. "But," she concluded tentatively, "there ought to be a cure for it."
"For what? The other woman?"
"That tired feeling, Mr. Travers."
"There isn't any cure," replied the bachelor promptly, "but there's a good preventive. When you were a very little girl," he continued patronizingly, "and liked jam——"
"I like it now!" declared the widow.
"How did your mother manage to preserve your interest in it?"
"She took the jam away, Mr. Travers, and put it on the top shelf always—just before I had had enough."
"Well, that's the way to preserve a man's interest in a woman," declared the bachelor. "Deal yourself out to him in homeopathic doses. Put yourself on the top shelf, where it is hard for him to get at you. Feed him sugar out of a teaspoon; don't pass him the whole sugar bowl. Then he will be always begging for more. One only wants more of anything that one can't get enough of, you know. Now, if a woman would use her judgment——"
"As if a woman in love had any judgment!" mocked the widow.
"That's it!" sighed the bachelor, "She never has. She just lays the whole feast before the man, flings all her charms at his head at once, surfeits him with the champagne of her wit and lets him eat all the sugar off his cake right away. The love affair springs up like a mushroom and—"