A Pitched Battle
The short-sighted man at this juncture felicitates himself because the two are getting on so well together. He never realises that a pitched battle has occurred under his very nose, and that the honours are about even.
If Tom possesses a particularly unfortunate flash-light photograph of the girl, the bride joyfully frames it and puts it on the mantel where all may see. If the original of the caricature remonstrates, the happy wife sweetly temporises and insists that it remain, because "Tom is so fond of it," and says, "it looks just like her."
Devious indeed are the paths of woman. She far excels the "Heathen Chinee" in his famous specialty of "ways that are dark and tricks that are vain."
Courtship is a game that a girl has to play without knowing the trump. The only way she ever succeeds at it is by playing to an imaginary trump of her own, which may be either open, disarming friendliness, or simple indifference.
When a man finds the way to a woman's heart a boulevard, he has taken the wrong road. When his path is easy and his burden light, it is time for him to doubt. When his progress seems like making a new way to the Klondike, he needs only to keep his courage and go on.
For, after all, it is woman who decides. A clever girl may usually marry any man she sees fit to honour with the responsibility of her bills. The ardent lover counts for considerably less than he is wont to suppose.
The Only One They Know
There is a good old scheme which the world of lovers has unanimously adopted, in order to find out where they stand. It is so simple as to make one weep, but it is the only one they know. This consists of an intentional absence, judiciously timed.
Suppose a man has been spending three or four evenings a week with the same girl, for a period of two or three months. Flowers, books, and chocolates have occasionally appeared, as well as invitations to the theatre. The man has been fed out of the chafing-dish, and also with accidental cake, for men are as fond of sugar as women, though they are ashamed to admit it.