"I thought I had."
"Men think such a lot of things which are too unsubtle, too clumsy, for a woman to comprehend. Yes, it is so."
"Men—myself—the Black Colonel?"
"He is far away; why bring him back?"
"Only because it may concern you, and anything which concerns you . . . is not to be spoken."
"It is more interesting to speculate on what might have happened if he had stayed, instead of running from his guns—no, I mean to his guns, for he was no coward. Discount a good deal from him and he remains a taking man. It flatters any woman to be coveted by a man of parts, good or bad. She likes the homage thus implied, and if she did not she would be no woman. She says to herself, 'What a pity that man should be in love with me because I would not have him at all.' With her next breath she says, 'A resolute lover, something like a lover, a great lover.'"
"The unconventional lover—and more," said I; "that's it, all down time, the primitive trait of sex, he who can lift a woman out of her groove into a surprise."
"Well," said Marget, "the Black Colonel has the right blood for an unconventional lover. You cannot make a Farquharson respectable by force, and I'm not sure about the Gordons!"
She looked at me with amusement in one eye and the rebel woman in the other and I laughed, and that was all. No; not all.
Such talks between Marget and myself may have seemed to lead nowhere, but actually they did. The unspoken side of them was full of those secrets which cannot be put into language, because they would perish in the effort. What is spoken may be good, but what is unspoken in love is still better. Behind the word, there hides the speech of the soul. You say one thing, and with the eye mean another, or you say it in a fashion only intelligible to a particular person. There is a telegraphy of souls, as well as of hearts and minds, and the lesson is never to believe your ears.