"James," he went on, a little later; "it makes you feel as if you were getting on, doesn't it?"
"How? In years?"
"Yes! I don't know about you, but I feel as old as Methusaleh to-night, and a whole lot wiser! And I must say I rather enjoy it!"
"Yes," said James reflectively, "it does seem a good deal that way."
"There are lots of questions you haven't asked me yet, James," continued Harry, after another interval.
"Are there? Well, tell me what they are and I'll ask them, if you're so crazy to answer them."
"The first is, What on earth could you ever have seen in That Woman?"
"There was no need to ask that question," replied James, laughing; "not after I saw her to-day, at any rate."
"She was so damned refined," sighed Harry. James laughed again at the coincidence of Harry's hitting on the very words of his own mental description of her. "I was most horribly depressed, and she looked so kind and sympathetic, and was, too, when I got to telling her my woes.... And she never used a particle of rouge, or anything of that kind.... Once I kissed her, and after that she managed, in that diabolical refined manner of hers, to convince me that she wouldn't have any more of that sort of thing without marriage. That made me respect her all the more, of course, as she knew it would. At one time, for a whole week, I should say, I was perfectly willing to marry her, whenever she wanted, and I didn't care whom I said it to, either.... Do you know, James, she would have been in for the devil of a time if I had gone on and pressed her to? I wonder what little plans she had for making me cease to care for her and back out at the right time.... There was no need for that, though; one day she called me 'kid,' and things like that before people, and I began to see."
"That was part of her little plan, of course," said James.