“On the other hand, the woman must now and then have lost the weakling on whom she had set her heart.”
From primeval woman we wandered by easy stages to woman, beflounced, befrilled and perfumed—woman on the path to supremacy.
“I don’t know,” said young Gascoyne—the glamour of his cottage romance upon him, “but I don’t think I care about the sophisticated sort. You never know when they are telling the truth. There was a girl at Oxford——”
Then followed a long story of a rather stupid romance of his college days, ending with, “And that put the finishing touch, and I got sent down.”
“Sent down?” I murmured casually, as if it were news.
“Yes, frightfully unfair. The other chap got off scot free on the ground that he was a hard worker and that there was nothing against him. Said he loved the girl and intended to marry her. Silly ass!”
Young Gascoyne asked me to lunch the next day. I refused, but he announced his intention of walking over in the morning to fetch me.
“It’ll be quite a relief to have someone to talk to. I’ve got one or two fellows coming down next week, but at present it’s deadly.”
He bade me good-night again and again but each time sat down and commenced a new conversation.
“I’m coming up to town in the autumn to read for the Bar. Then I shall have as good time as is possible for a man with no money.”