"Why not?"
"Because--_really_--I don't like women. And when--if--I _do_ like them,
I hate liking them.... The ones I don't dislike are the ordinary
ones--like Mizzi."
I said that it hadn't occurred to me that Mizzi was at all an ordinary
woman.
He said: "Perhaps 'ordinary' isn't the word. What I mean is that we
don't--_I_ don't, at any rate--think of Mizzi as a woman exactly. She's
business-like and does things--she's more like a man."
I said that it hadn't occurred to me that Mizzi was in the least like a
man. Really, I must have been rather irritating, but he bore it all with
exemplary patience. "She's the sort of woman I can stand, anyhow," he
asserted.
"Then you'd better marry her," I replied jocularly, but he seemed to
take it in all seriousness. "I don't want to marry at all," he repeated,
"and neither does Mizzi. She doesn't bother with men. Her dream is to
own a hotel, and she thinks a man would only get in her way...."