"But, hang it, man, that's just it. What the devil can I do? If she were a sweetheart of mine, if there had been any sort of a love relation, or even the possibility of the establishment of one, the potentiality existing when a man who is free, marriageable, has been on terms of fairly intimate friendship with a woman, then I might reasonably go to her and make some kind of explanation. But now, what can I do? I can't go up to her and say, 'Here, my dear, I am sorry if I've overlooked telling you that I'm married. I'm sorry if I've caused you to have futile expectations'—or just go up to her and remark, quite casually, 'Oh, by the way, you know I have a wife.' I fancy that if I had the wit, the experience that you have, for instance, I might manage to contrive some subtle means, something to set this thing straight, for, honestly—you'll have to take my word for it—what I have said about the whole thing being just friendship is absolutely and literally true."
"Just like with a man?"
"Yes, just like with a man."
"Then, that's the answer. Treat the affair just as if she were a man. If gossip had placed you in a false position with a man, you would go to him, wouldn't you, and have a straight talk with him? Why can't you give a woman, a woman whom you think so much of, credit for having as much broadmindedness, intelligence, as a man? You hint about my experience with women, about subtleties. Listen, if you will take advice from the depths of my ignorance, I will tell you one thing—and it is something that I was stupid enough not to discover for years—the sort of thing that is so obvious that you pass right over it without seeing it—which is that with women, at least the right sort of women, the best course, the only sensible course, is to tell them the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. To some men, those who think that in dealing with women one requires some specially intricate means, that would seem the very culmination of subtlety, but it is, I am earnestly convinced, the one and only way."
Yes, it sounded easy. He ruminated, turned the suggestion over and over. The theory seemed all right, but when he came to translate it into action, when he came to think of how he would approach her, how he would open the subject, what he would say, it became utterly impractical, impossible.
Karsten read his mind. "Yes, I know that it is easy to give advice in such matters and quite another thing to carry out the suggestion. But the only thing for you to do is to keep turning the thing over in your mind, familiarize yourself with the idea. Then, gradually, as the strangeness thereof wears away, when it no longer stuns your brain with the impact of something astounding, precipitate, you will find it becoming more rational to you. Eventually you may find that working out the thing becomes fairly natural, even relatively easy. What is there about it that sticks you, anyway?"
"Blessed if I know; no one particular point, the whole thing more or less. I know how I myself have always been able to see just what the other chap should do, how it has irritated me often to see some fellow pursue an absolutely foolish course with respect to some woman, doing exactly what he shouldn't do, purblind to the absolutely obvious. I have felt like taking him by the shoulder and saying, 'Here, Tom, Dick, or Bill, or whoever you may be, can't you see, you fool, that what this particular girl wants is this, that, or the other. It is like watching a chess game. The onlooker sees the approaching mate much sooner than the man who is playing the game. And in this kind of a thing another can't possibly see into, or appreciate just what is going on in the other chap's mind; estimate the infinitely fine manifestations, the super-delicate emotional vibrations so imperceptible that the man himself can only barely feel them without being able to analyze them. And, for one thing, I think just one of the flaws in your theory is that the premises are not altogether well taken. You say, 'If the relation is just like that of man with man, then treat it like that.' And in a way it is; but then again, in another way it isn't. It can't be. With a man the idea of sex relation is necessarily absent, but with a woman, even when neither has it in mind at all, it cannot be avoided altogether, ignored. Take this case. I'm sure that I never thought of it. In fact, I'm sure that she never thought of it either. The very circumstance that quite likely I never did mention my wife, that I've not the slightest recollection whether I ever did so or not, shows, doesn't it, that my mind was entirely free from the idea. So, with a man, there would be no problem at all; but with a woman, with Sylvia, no matter how delicately I approach the matter, the suggestion must come into evidence that one fears, one thinks, that she must, to some extent at least, have had in mind the fact that she is a woman and I a man. It is virtually as if one said, 'Here, I'm afraid that you may not be quite clear that this is purely a friendly relation, that sex doesn't enter into it.' Damn it, I can't express the thought without getting it into phrases that are blunt, clumsy; but you get the idea, don't you? I'm hanged if I can see how I could do it without becoming positively insulting.
"And then there's another thing, something that really hurts me more than any other phase of it all, and that is, Why should a girl like Sylvia, clean, sweet-minded, sensible, be affected by a thing like that? It is almost as if she, in fact, did suspect me of having really had in the back of my mind all the time some such insidious intention. And still, I am absolutely sure that she cannot have. By the gods, Karsten, the ways of women are something absolutely inscrutable to me."
"Oh, that's simple enough. It takes no mysterious knowledge of sex to explain that. Use your common sense, man. I'll admit that that struck me also, for a moment, and I was a bit disappointed in her; but, if you reason for a moment, it is plain enough. It's not that, not with Sylvia. It is nothing to her whether you mentioned your wife or not, whether you have a wife or not. She's not the kind of a girl who looks upon every male who is fortuitously thrown in her way as a potential husband, whose entire scheme of existence is bound up in the idea of ensnaring a provider. And I'm sure that she cannot believe that you had any philandering in mind. Trust a woman for that, especially one so delicately constituted as Sylvia. And even the most stupid ones, any woman, since it is part of the very essence of being a woman, knows instinctively, by intuition, when the sex element, however subtly, is hovering about. No, what has affected Sylvia, the reason why she keeps you at arm's length, is the manner in which the thing has been presented to her. Can't you imagine the insidious, slimy suggestiveness of that Wilson individual, coming to her with her, 'You really ought to know, my dear'; how noisome the mere idea must have been to her that any one, the Wilson thing, all the rest of the gossips, were turning this thing over and over on their salacious tongues, this innocent, patently clean relation existing between her and you. It must have been immeasurably offensive to her, intolerable. Put yourself in her place for a moment. Probably she may have been as reluctant as you are to give up this pleasant friendship. But what could she do? Being a woman, hedged in by the myriad conventions which tie up a woman's freedom of action much more than they do a man's, she'd find herself in an even more difficult position than that which you are in and which puzzles you so. No, old man, that's all plain enough; and if you find that you can't bring yourself to take the bull by the horns and talk it out with her, why, the only thing you can do is to let the thing rest for the time being. Neither seek her nor evade her. Don't increase her difficulties by asking her to go about with you; to a girl so essentially honest and honorable it must be extremely annoying to be forced to resort to the small lies, the petty prevarications of convention, to invent excuses—but don't evade her either. Be as courteous, friendly and frank as ever, and, above all, be natural. As time passes the gossips will find other victims and eventually you can, if you are careful, tactful, drift back into the old relation. Yes, it's rotten, isn't it, that in this world such damnable machinations as breaking up a clean, beautiful relation as that between you and Sylvia can be possible, and that it can be carried out triumphantly, in the name of purity, of virtue. By the gods, I think at times that if the prudes were less busy, the world might be a much cleaner place to live in."
Karsten was right. Kent felt an intense gratitude to him for having dispelled thus surely, by the incontrovertible logic of plain sense, the rankling doubt that had assailed him, strive as he might against it, about Sylvia. It placed the whole situation in a much better light. Sylvia was all right. The essence of the relation between them had not been vitiated. All this was but the disturbing echo of something from outside, annoying, distressing, but in the end surely ineffectual. So he would follow Karsten's advice. Everything would come out all right.