Then, with pen in hand, as he was about to write the address, he started again to think. It was women--girls--who had brought him to his present pass, that was how he put it to himself. What Mabel Joyce said was perfectly true: he could not be alone with a girl without making love to her. It was a physical impossibility; he did not know why, but it was. The mischief was that his instinct had not warned him they were dangerous, hence his horrid situation. Indeed, it was hard that they should be dangerous; they were so pleasant to make love to. There were men who cared nothing for women, who went through life without making love--real love!--to a single one. How they managed he could not think. To him life under such conditions would not be worth living. He was a Sybarite. Life meant to him its good things; were there better things than women? He doubted it. He thought little of men; he had a very high opinion of women; he doubted if he had ever met one in whom there was not something to be desired.
Take Mabel Joyce. She was showing him a side of her character whose existence he had not suspected. Yet he understood her, quite believed her when she said that she was fighting for her life. No one could have been sweeter to him than she had been; then she was such a pretty little thing, from the tips of her little pink toes to the top of her fluffy little head. It could hardly be set down to her as a fault if she was sweet no longer. Let him be just! Then there was Gladys, a girl of quite a different type; but that was the charm about women, there were so many types. He was persuaded that they would have the best possible time together, if the fates could only manage to be kind. He would make her a model husband, he really would; he rather wondered what it would feel like to be a husband, but he did not doubt that it would be all right. A little cramped, perhaps; but he would study her, and her interests, in every possible way. She should never regret the father she had lost, who was precious little loss after all. He would be better to her than a father; he should rather think so! Then there was Mary Carmichael; but at the thought of Mary Carmichael his pulses began to dance--that any man should be ass enough to care nothing for women when there was Mary Carmichael! Also, let him not forget little Stella--why, what an idiot he was; she was waiting for him now! He glanced at his watch. Great Scott! how the time had flown! And that poor child was longingly waiting for him to put his arms about her and stifle her with kisses. That he should be brute enough to let her wait!
He addressed the envelope, rang the bell, bade the lad who answered take it at once to Russell Square, took his hat off its peg, and, after a few hurried words to Andrews as he went out, started off for Kensington.
CHAPTER XVIII
[THE PERFECT LOVER]
Stella, opening the door for him herself, was at him like a small wild thing.
"I thought you were never coming!"
"Why, it's not yet half-past five."
"Half-past five! when I expected papa to bring you with him, and he said you'd be here by five! Come in here; I'll talk to you!"
She took from him his hat and stick and gloves, and placed them on a table in the hall; then she led him by the sleeve of his coat into a room on the left, and shut the door, and drew a long breath.