"Oh, yes, you do! We'll change the subject again."
"You needn't. I shall not talk."
"Yes, you will. How ever did Miss MacAllister get such a spite at Sinclair as she showed last evening?"
"Spite!" (with immense contempt). "Spite!" (still more contemptuously).
"Well, I do not know what else you would call it. She made game of him and bally-ragged him at every turn. If he hadn't been so well able to take care of himself, I should have had to interfere and protect him, since he was our guest."
"And you think that it was because she had a spite at him? It's a lot a man, even a married man, knows about the ways of a woman."
"I'll acknowledge it, Gwen. 'There be three things which are too wonderful for me, yea, four which I know not,' and the most wonderful of the four are the ways of a maid with a man." He took the chance that she would not notice the inversion; and she did not. "Solomon was much more married than I am, and he did not understand the ways of a woman, Gwen. It's not fair to expect it of me."
She did not know whether to laugh or not. It was hard to resist the serio-comic, mock-penitent expression on his face. She felt like punishing him by breaking off the conversation. But the subject was too interesting to drop. That was what he had counted on, and he judged wisely.
"I should have thought that a man who had been married nearly a dozen years, and who had such a wide ante-nuptial experience, ought to be able to recognize the symptoms when a woman is falling in love."
"Do you mean to say that the way Miss MacAllister treated Sinclair last evening is a symptom that she is falling in love with him?"