about it."

"That's another Tupperesque truism, isn't it, dear?"

"Sure thing. Who am I to mock at the Proverbial One when I've never yet
evolved anything better?... Listen; you don't want me to marry
Stephanie, do you?"

"Yes, I do."

"No, you don't. You think you do--"

"I do, I do, Louis! She's the sweetest, finest, most generous, most
suitable--"

"Sure," he said, hastily, "she's all that except 'suitable'--and she
isn't that, and I'm not, either. For the love of Mike, Lily, let me go
on admiring her, even loving her in a perfectly harmless--"

"It _isn't_ harmless to caress a girl--"

"Why--you can't call it caressing--"

"What do you call it?"

"Nothing. We've always been on an intimate footing. She's perfectly
unembarrassed about--whatever impulsive--er--fugitive impulses--"

"You _do_ kiss her!"

"Seldom--very seldom. At moments the conditions happen accidentally
to--suggest--some slight demonstration--of a very warm friendship--"

"You positively sicken me! Do you think a nice girl is going to let a
man paw her if she doesn't consider him pledged to her?"

"I don't think anything about it. Nice girls have done madder things
than their eulogists admit. As a plain matter of fact you can't tell
what anybody nice is going to do under theoretical circumstances. And
the nicer they are the bigger the gamble--particularly if they're
endowed with brains--"

"_That's_ cynicism. You seem to be developing several streaks--"

"Polite blinking of facts never changes them. Conforming to conventional
and accepted theories never yet appealed to intelligence. I'm not going
to be dishonest with myself; that's one of the streaks I've developed.
You ask me if I love Stephanie enough to marry her, and I say I don't.
What's the good of blinking it? I don't love anybody enough to marry
'em; but I like a number of girls well enough to spoon with them."

"_That_ is disgusting!"

"No, it isn't," he said, with smiling weariness; "it's the unvarnished
truth about the average man. Why wink at it? The average man can like a
lot of girls enough to spoon and sentimentalise with them. It's the pure
accident of circumstance and environment that chooses for him the one he
marries. There are myriads of others in the world with whom, under
proper circumstances and environment, he'd have been just as
happy--often happier. Choice is a mystery, constancy a gamble,
discontent the one best bet. It isn't pleasant; it isn't nice f