I returned, as seriously as could have been expected:
“Perhaps it would be thought rather intimate. People don’t like to talk of such things.”
“They’re ashamed,” Minver declared. “The lovers don’t either of them, in a given case, like to let others know how much the woman had to do with making the offer, and how little the man.”
Minver’s point provoked both Wanhope and myself to begin a remark at the same time. We begged each other’s pardon, and Wanhope insisted that I should go on.
“Oh, merely this,” I said. “I don’t think they’re so much ashamed as that they have forgotten the different stages. You were going to say—?”
“Very much what you said. It’s astonishing how people forget the vital things and remember trifles. Or perhaps as we advance from stage to stage what once seemed the vital things turn to trifles. Nothing can be more vital in the history of a man and a woman than how they became husband and wife, and yet not merely the details, but the main fact, would seem to escape record if not recollection. The next generations knows nothing of it.”
“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. It’s pathetic to see them caught up into something more serious in that other game, which they are so good at.”