“It's a gift,” said Hy cheerily, “plus experience.”
The Worm was slowly shaking his head. “It's not experience,” he said. “That's a factor, but that's not it. You hit it the first time. It's a gift—perhaps plus eyelashes.”
“But, my boy, I sometimes fail. Take the case you were about to mention—Betty Deane. I regard Betty as my most notable miscalculation—my Dardanelles.”
“Not for a minute, Hy. As I've heard the story, Betty was afraid of you, ran away, married in a panic. She, a self-expresser of the self-expressers, a seeker of the Newest Freedom, marries a small standpatter who makes gas engines. To escape your hypnotic influence. No—I can't concede it. That, sir, was a tribute to your prowess, no less.”
Hy assumed an expression of modesty. “If you know all about it, why ask me? I don't know. A man like me, reasonably young, reasonably hardworking, reasonably susceptible—well, good lord! I need the feminine—”
“I'm not puzzled about the demand,” said the Worm, “but the supply.”
“Oh, come! There aren't so many. I did have that little flare-tip with Betty. She promised to go away with me on the night boat. She didn't turn up; I took that trip alone.”
“It got as far as that, eh?”
“It did. Whatever her reasons she skipped back to her home town and married the maker of gas engines. The Hilda Hansen matter caught me on the rebound. There couldn't ever have been anything in that, anyway. The girl's a leaner. Hasn't even a protective crust. Some kind uncle ought to take her and her little wall-paper designs back to Wisconsin. But this is—different!” He fumbled rather excitedly in his pocket and produced a letter—pages and pages of it, closely written m a nervous hand that was distinguished mainly by unusually heavy down strokes of a stub pen. He glanced eagerly through it, coloring as his eyes fell on this phrase and that. “You know, I'd almost like to read you a little of it. Damn it, the girl's got something—courage, fire, personality! She's perfectly wild—a pagan woman! She's—”
The Worm raised an arresting pipe. “Don't,” he said dryly. “Never do that! Besides, your defense, while fairly plausible, accounts for only about three months of your life.”