"And there," he explained, "is where I've scored. I knew that Viola is obstinate, and that if she starts by turning you down she'll keep it up out of sheer cussedness.
"So I never let her start. Women," he generalized, "admire success. If I were to give you your innings all over again, Furnival—and I will if you like—you couldn't make anything of them with those three howlers to your account. There isn't any record of failure against me. Good God! D'you suppose I'd be such a damn fool as to muff it three times with the same woman? Not me!"
I said he needn't rub it in.
He said he was rubbing it in for my good, so that I shouldn't go and do the same thing next time.
"Because—now we're coming to the point—there will be a next time for you, Furnival. That's why I don't even pretend to be sorry for you. There'll be other women. But there aren't any next times for me, and there aren't any other women. This—I mean she—was my one chance. It was pretty jumpy work, I can tell you, sitting tight and gambling with it for ten blasted days. Any other man would have gone clean off his chump with worrying over it. There've been times when I've felt like it myself. It was infernal—when you think what I stood to lose."
I said that was all rot. It was his beastly egoism. He didn't stand to lose more than I did.
He said it wasn't a question of more or less. And it wasn't his egoism. It was his sweetness and his heart-rending humility. He'd stood to lose everything. He'd be done for if Viola wouldn't have him. He couldn't look at any other woman after her. And he put it to me: What other woman would look at him? Whereas my resources were practically inexhaustible. Almost any nice woman would know that I would give her what she wanted. And almost any nice woman would give me what I wanted, too. When I insisted that I didn't see it, he said I'd see it shortly. He gave me six months.
Viola, he declared, would never have given me what I wanted. I could never give her what she wanted. And he could.
He said he admitted that it was odd that he should be able to succeed where I failed; but so it was, and he went on to expound to me all the reasons for my failure.
"To begin with, you're not her sort; or, rather, you're too much her sort. You with your integrity are one of the beautiful works of God, and she's been used to that sort of beauty all her life and she's tired of it. But she isn't used to me. She never will be. She's never seen anything in the least like me before, and she never will see anything quite like me again as long as she lives. I'm the queer, unexpected thing she wants and always will want.