“That appears to let Acton out,” Minver said. “But how do you know what you were saying, Wanhope?”
“I've ventured to make some inquiries in that region at one time. Not directly, of course. At second and third hand. It isn't inconceivable, if we conceive of a life after this, that a man should forget, in its more important interests and occupations, just how he quitted this world, or at least the particulars of the article of death. Of course, we must suppose a good portion of eternity to have elapsed.” Wanhope continued, dreamily, with a deep breath almost equivalent to something so unscientific as a sigh: “Women are charming, and in nothing more than the perpetual challenge they form for us. They are born defying us to match ourselves with them.”
“Do you mean that Miss Hazelwood—” Rulledge began, but Minver's laugh arrested him.
“Nothing so concrete, I'm afraid,” Wanhope gently returned. “I mean, to match them in graciousness, in loveliness, in all the agile contests of spirit and plays of fancy. There's something pathetic to see them caught up into something more serious in that other game, which they are so good at.”
“They seem rather to like it, though, some of them, if you mean the game of love,” Minver said. “Especially when they're not in earnest about it.”
“Oh, there are plenty of spoiled women,” Wanhope admitted. “But I don't mean flirting. I suppose that the average unspoiled woman is rather frightened than otherwise when she knows that a man is in love with her.”
“Do you suppose she always knows it first?” Rulledge asked.
“You may be sure,” Minver answered for Wanhope, “that if she didn't know it, he never would.” Then Wanhope answered for himself:
“I think that generally she sees it coming. In that sort of wireless telegraphy, that reaching out of two natures through space towards each other, her more sensitive apparatus probably feels the appeal of his before he is conscious of having made any appeal.”
“And her first impulse is to escape the appeal?” I suggested.