“What was she like?” asked Diana, with an amused look.
“Like no woman I have ever seen!” replied Dimitrius, smiling quizzically at her. “Mature, and fully ripened in her opinions,—fairly obstinate, and difficult to get rid of.”
“I congratulate you on having succeeded!” said Farnese.
“Succeeded? In what way?”
“In having got rid of her!”
“Oh, yes! But—I don’t think she wanted to go!”
“No woman ever wants to go if there’s a good-looking bachelor with whom she has any chance to stay!” said the Baron Rousillon, expanding his shirt front and smiling largely all round the table. “The ‘poor lone lady’ must have taken your rejection of her services rather badly.”
“That’s the way most men would look at it,” replied Dimitrius. “But, my dear Baron, I’m afraid we are rather narrow and primitive in our ideas of the fair sex—not to say conceited. It is quite our own notion that all women need us or find us desirable. Some women would much rather not be bored with us at all. One of the prettiest women I ever knew remained unmarried because, as she frankly said, she did not wish to be a housekeeper to any man or be bored by his perpetual company. There’s something in it, you know! Every man has his own particular ‘groove’ in which he elects to run—and in his ‘groove’ he’s apt to become monotonous and tiresome. That is why, when I advertised, I asked for a woman ‘of mature years,’—someone who had ‘settled down,’ and who would not find it wearisome to trot tamely alongside of my special ‘groove,’ but of course it was very absurd on my part to expect to find a woman of that sort who was at the same time well-educated and clever.”
“You should marry, my dear Dimitrius!—you should marry!” said the Baroness Rousillon, with a brilliant flash of her fine eyes and an encouraging smile.
“Never, my dear Baroness!—never!” he replied, with emphasis. “I am capable of many things, but not of that most arrant stupidity! Were I to marry, my work would be ruined—I should become immersed in the domesticities of the kitchen and the nursery, living my life at no higher grade than the life of the farmyard or rabbit-warren. In my opinion, marriage is a mistake,—but we must not argue such a point in the presence of a happily married couple like yourself and the Baron. Look at our excellent friend, Chauvet! He has never married.”