“What makes you think so?” she asked.
“Well,––with men it is purely and simply a wholehearted attraction of congenial tastes and manly virtues or evil propensities, as the case may be. There is no question of sex coming between. When that enters into the reckoning, everything else goes by the board. Not that I infer that man and woman cannot be true friends and 163 fast friends, but everything has to take second place to that question of sex.”
Eileen did not answer.
“Don’t you agree?” asked Phil with a smile.
“No,––I do not, but I don’t feel that I can argue the point.”
They were silent once more. Then again Eileen broke into the quiet.
“Oh, dear!––I almost forgot. I wonder, Mr. Ralston, if you would care to come to our place the week after next. Daddy, you know, has bought Baron DeDillier’s house on the hill, and we are going to have a house-warming and a big social time for all daddy’s friends. Would you care to come if I send you an invitation? Jim will be there. He seldom gets left out of anything, pleasant or otherwise.”
Phil was not so very sure of himself, and he would have preferred rather to have been omitted, but he could not, in good grace, decline such an invitation.
“Why, certainly!” he replied. “It will give me the greatest of pleasure.”
“Good! We shall have a nice dance together to make up for the one we missed to-night,––and a talk. Maybe that night I shall be in better frame of mind for meeting your arguments on the relations of sex and friendship.”