"All of which is so easy!" broke in the widow sarcastically.
"There'd be some glory and some reason in giving up a big vice," sighed the bachelor, "if a fellow had one. But the trouble is that most of us men haven't any big criminal tendencies, merely a heap of little follies and weaknesses that there isn't any particular virtue in sacrificing or any particular harm in keeping."
"And which you always do keep, in spite of all your New Year's vows," remarked the widow ironically.
"Huh!" The bachelor laughed cynically. "It's our New Year's vows that help us to keep 'em. The very fact that a fellow has sworn to forego anything, whether it's a habit or a girl, makes it more attractive. I've thrown away a whole box of cigars with the finest intentions in the world and then gotten up in the middle of the night to fish the pieces out of the waste basket. And that midnight smoke was the sweetest I ever had. It was sweeter than the apples I stole when I was a kid and than the kisses I stole when——"
"If you came here to dilate on the joys of sin, Mr. Travers," began the widow coldly.
"And," proceeded the bachelor, "I've made up my mind to stop flirting with a girl, because I found out that she was beginning to—to——"
"I understand," interrupted the widow sympathetically.
"And by jove!" finished the bachelor, "I had to restrain myself to keep from going back and proposing to her!"
"How lucky you did!" commented the widow witheringly.
"But I wouldn't have," explained the bachelor ruefully, "if the girl had restrained herself."