“Yes; you told me I had the deportment of an octogenarian and the language of an infant.”
“Precisely,” he grinned; “since which time you have improved wonderfully. But that’s not my point just now. Now I understand why you flared up so when I suggested that all women eventually made eyes at me.”
“Oh, dear!” she affected boredom; “why are you always bringing up that topic?”
It was the first time he had brought it up; in fact he had been all morning diplomatically diverting the lady from just that topic. But he made no remark about this characteristic feminine disavowal of facts.
“Because I have just discovered why you were angry——”
“I was angry, angry enough to strike you, because without waiting to find out what sort of a woman I was you hinted that before long I’d be—— Well, sir”—a little flash of her old anger came back—“I am not the sort to make eyes at anyone or write anyone letters of confession!”
“I believe you!” he agreed, so firmly that she knew he was speaking from conviction. “And that’s why you interest me.”
He didn’t know why at first, he said. Deep within the “subliminal” the reason of his interest was hidden. She had giggled and spluttered like an over-grown child, he told her. (Thank you, she said.) Kid-women he had never taken any stock in—those that gabbled without thinking or whined like spoiled babies, or substituted flippancy for conversation. Indeed, at the very start on the starboard rail of the Victoria she had exhibited all the female qualities that ordinarily sent him flying; but he was interested from the beginning. Always he trusts his interests, not his reason; reason is only useful in analyzing what is already done; his “interest” led him to ignore the personality number one which she presented at the starboard rail. Result: Keuka and personalities numbers two, three, four and five!
She listened contentedly. There is no glow warmer than that which comes on being understood!
“Of course you wouldn’t go soft like all the others!” he announced. “I treated you like a man, and you responded like a man. You have the point of view of a man and the physique of a man. The arms fool one,” he looked critically at her rounded arms. “One forgets that muscles don’t show on a woman. It’s the feminine layer of fat that all the magazine doctors have been talking about lately; but the muscles are there. That silk medal tells me that, even if I didn’t know,” he made a wry face, “from experience.”