Sometimes I think I am quite clever. Again I think I am a perfect fool. And the agains come oftener than the sometimes.
I would enjoy making a continuous narrative of this story, as I could if I were writing a book, but this is a record of real life, and real life does not happen in finished chapters. If you try to make it, you either have to leave out a bit, or go back and repeat something.
Thus, in telling this story of Flora, if I told the perfect faith I had in her at first and of how utterly I came to know and despise her afterward, I should show to everybody the fool I made of myself, and that exhibition I prefer to keep as much to myself as possible. The Angel knows it, and that is bad enough. So that is why I must make a hodge-podge of it, telling a bit here and a bit there, just as things happened, and pretending that I saw through her from the first—which, however, I didn't.
But, in order to give some idea of her methods, which are of interest as a human document, I must set down faithfully how I came to be drawn into this love-story, and how the Angel and Cary pulled me out.
This is the very beginning of it.
If you knew our best man, you probably would not be surprised to make the discovery that I made—to wit: that two girls were in love with him at the same time, for the most ordinary of men have sometimes a powerful attraction for the most superior of girls, and Arthur Beguelin was much above the ordinary, in looks, manners, breeding, and wealth. He was, as I have said, almost rich, which would of itself, to the cynic, preclude his being at all nice. But he was nice. I liked him, the Angel liked him, and these two girls loved him.
I will admit, however, that I was surprised,—just a little,—at first, but after I thought about it, I said to Aubrey, "Well, why not?" He said, "Why not what?"
"Why shouldn't two girls be in love with him?"
"They should," said the Angel, pleasantly. "There is no doubt in the world that they should. But who are the girls and who is the man?"
I thought of course that he knew what I was talking about, or I shouldn't have begun in the middle like that, but after all, if you do begin in the middle, you can often skip the whole beginning, and hurry along to the end.