“That remark,” commented Matthew, “always seemed to me not to be far from the vaudeville stuff about women—husband and wife fight stuff. It’s cheap cant. Women queer! Every one’s queer!”
“So, why pick on women, eh?”
“Exactly.”
“Well, I’ll tell you why. With a man you know where you are. You size him up and you know how to deal with him. With women you can size up again and again; you think you’ve got it and then you find that just the thing you’ve done to please them is the thing that doesn’t please them.”
“More and more like George Cohan. Why have you such a sudden discouraged interest in women, Dick?”
“I haven’t an interest in women. I was just thinking that I’d like to know how to make things a bit easier for Cecily.”
He sounded quite serious and anxious for confidence. Matthew dropped his air of banter and stood at the window staring down over the miles of commercial roofs below him. It was immensely difficult for them both to go on and yet they both wanted to. Matthew began at the beginning.
“Are things hard for Cecily?”
Dick looked at him squarely. “I rather thought you guessed she was a bit blue when you took her away from the dance that night during Christmas week.”
“I thought she was tired out, if that’s what you’re driving at. I should think you’d expect that. A woman who has three children——”