ny trousers! He was pretty peeved, judging from what
he said about my being on the wrong number. And mother, listening all
the time, and I knowing that she knew--something told me that she
knew--and she knowing that I knew she knew.... I tell you, it was
awful!"

"And the girl?"

"She broke off the engagement. Apparently she waited at the church from
eleven till one-thirty, and then began to get impatient. She wouldn't
see me when I called in the afternoon, but I got a letter from her
saying that what had happened was all for the best, as she had been
thinking it over and had come to the conclusion that she had made a
mistake. She said something about my not being as dynamic as she had
thought I was. She said that what she wanted was something more like
Lancelot or Sir Galahad, and would I look on the episode as closed."

"Did you explain about the trousers?"

"Yes. It seemed to make things worse. She said that she could forgive a
man anything except being ridiculous."

"I think you're well out of it," said Sam, judicially. "She can't have
been much of a girl."

"I feel that now. But it doesn't alter the fact that my life is ruined.
I have become a woman-hater. It's an infernal nuisance, because
practically all the poetry I have ever written rather went out of its
way to boost women, and now I'll have to start all over again and
approach the subject from another angle. Women! When I think how mother
behaved and how Wilhelmina treated me, I wonder there isn't a law
against them. 'What mighty ills have not been done by Woman! Who was't
betrayed the Capitol....'"

"In Washington?" said Sam, puzzled. He had heard nothing of this. But
then he generally confined his reading of the papers to the sporting
page.

"In Rome, you ass! Ancient Rome."

"Oh, as long ago as that?"

"I was quoting from Thomas Otway's 'Orphan.' I wish I could write like
Otway. He knew what he was talking about. 'Who was't betrayed the
Capitol? A woman. Who lost Marc Anthony the world? A woman. Who was the
cause of a long ten years' war and laid at last old Troy in ashes?
Woman! Destructive, damnable, deceitful woman!'"

"Well, of course, he may be right in a way. As regards some women, I
mean. But the girl I met on the dock...."

"Don't!" said Eustace Hignett. "If you have anything bitter and
derogatory to say about women, say it and I will listen eagerly. But if
you merely wish to gibber about the ornamental exterior of some dashed
girl