"That I won't propose to you. You've been trying to inveigle me into it
for nearly a year now. But you'll have to do without my scalp."
The big Westerner's jesting manner carried his remark, despite its
almost insolent frankness. Besides, what with Amy's content with
herself and partiality for him, it would have been difficult for him to
offend her. Never before had she been able to lure him so near to the
one subject she wished to discuss with him. "What conceit," cried she,
all smiles. "You fancy I've been flirting with you. I might have
known! Men always misunderstand a woman's friendship. I suppose you
imagine I'm in love with you."
"Not in the least. No more than I with you."
She looked crestfallen at this. Whether a woman has much or little to
give a man, whether she wants his love or not, she always wishes to feel
that it is there waiting for her. "Why do you imagine I wish you to ask
me to marry you?" she asked, swiftly recovering and not believing him.
He did not answer that. Instead he said: "You came very near to getting
your way about a year ago. I had about made up my mind to marry you."
"To marry me," she echoed ironically.
"To marry you," he repeated in his attractive, downright fashion.
"Well--why didn't you?"
"I decided I didn't need you," said he, most matter-of-fact. "I saw I'd
be repeating the blunder I made when I married before. When I got out
of college, I was so discouraged by the prospect, I felt so weak without
money or influence, that I let myself drift into a great folly--for it
is a folly to imagine that money or influence are of any value in making
a career. They're the results of a career, not its cause. Once more,
when I faced the big battle here in New York, I was fooled for a while
in spite of myself by the same old delusion. I saw that the successful
men all had great wealth, and I made the same old shallow mistake of
supposing their wealth gave them their success. But I got back to the
sensible point of view very quickly."
"And so--I--escaped."
"Escaped is the word for it."
"You are flattering--to-day."
"That sarcasm because I did not so much as speak of your charms, I
suppose?"
"You might have said I was personally a little of a temptation."
"Why go into that?" rejoined he, with an intonation that gave her a
chance to be flattered, if she chose. "Of course, if I had decided I
needed you in my career, I'd have flung myself over ears into love. As
it was, don't you think my keeping away from you complimentary?"
This was the nearest he had ever come to an admission that she was
attractive to him; she straightway exaggerated it into a declaration of
love. Very few women make or even understand a man's clear distinction
between physical attraction and love; Amy thought them one and the same.
"You are so hard!" said she. "I wonder at myself for liking you." As
she spoke, she rapidly thought it out with the aid of her vanity; men
and women, in their relations with each other, always end by taking
counsel of vanity. He wanted her; he had taken this subtle means to get
within her defenses and, without running the risk of a refusal, find out
whether he could get her, whether a woman of her wealth and position
would condescend to him. It was with her sweetest, candidest smile that
she went on, "Now it is all settled. You don't want to marry me; you
aren't in love with me. I need not be afraid of any designs, mercenary
or otherwise. At last, we can be real friends."
He reflected, then said with a judicial, impersonal air, "No matter how
well a man plays the game of man and man, he usually plays the game of
man and woman badly. Why? Because he thinks the conditions are
different. He is deceived by woman's air of guilelessness into
imagining he has the game all his own way."
"What has that got to do with what I said to you?" asked she, her color
a confession that the question was unnecessary.