"Let's stroll then, by all means. I should enjoy it; and you know how I love tobacco. I saw you looking on at that dance; and I rather envied you. I often wish I could set aside a few dances just for looking on, without having to make talk for any one. People interest me so passionately; always have done, since I can remember."
"Even Button Quails, and black-hearted woman-haters?"
"Yes. Especially the woman-haters; because they need converting!"
"And are unconvertible," Lenox declared with a laugh. "But don't you ever get sickened with the deadly sameness of the whole tribe of us,—grinding ourselves to dust in the eternal treadmill of hatred and love, hope and despair? Every conceivable human complication has been repeated ad nauseam since Adam made a fool of himself in the garden of Eden."
"And through all that endless sameness, no two men and women have ever behaved twice alike! That's where the interest comes in, don't you see? To-night, for instance, Miss Maurice and that pretty child Elsie Mayhew are both wasting their sweetness on men quite unworthy of them; but each is doing the same thing in a fashion so entirely her own, that it is not like looking on at the same play at all. I am specially concerned over the Mayhew muddle, for I believe that handsome Engineer boy is capable of breaking his heart in earnest because Elsie has lost hers pro tem.,—engaging little goose that she is. Really I sometimes think that the man and woman puzzle is just an endless game of cross questions and crooked answers!"
Lenox laughed again, harshly.
"That's a straight shot!" he said. "It's a mad world; and the maddest creature in it is the man who stakes his happiness on the state of a woman's heart."
Honor slipped her hand from his arm.
"Really, Captain Lenox," she protested, half-laughing, half in earnest, "that remark almost amounts to an insult! What do you suppose Theo would say if he heard you?"
"Wouldn't stop to pick his language," Lenox answered with a twisted smile. "But his testimony counts for nothing. He has found the one woman among a thousand, that even Solomon failed to find; and the Lord knows he didn't judge them from hearsay!"