“Really? I am a very simple person. Omne ignotum pro magnifico. Women I know and detest. Men I don’t know and admire. If I married one, I should know him.”
“But you might find him better than you expected.”
“If I didn’t expect to find him better than I expected, I shouldn’t marry him; so I should still be disappointed. You see I know just enough about men to know that they are better left unknown. I quite agree with Nor about the blue hills. It is better to keep one’s illusions. At present I am happy in the thought that somewhere in the universe there exists a fine man. Even the average man is less petty than the average woman, so that the one fine man must be a Bayard indeed.”
He laughed.
“Then, if he came along and made you an offer of marriage—”
“I should close with it at once.”
“You are a droll girl,” he could not help saying. “You are the first of your sex who has ever admitted to me that men are better than women.”
“Didn’t I tell you how sly we were? A man has one or two big sins, a woman a bundle of little ones.”
“Ah, well,” he said, smiling. “Two of a trade, as a friend of mine says.”
“Now I don’t understand you—or rather, your friend,” she said, flushing a little.