of a
woman with the cornflower eyes and the flaxen hair. He no longer
wondered that three men in succession, weary of the mud of fighting, had
come to her for rest. He could even comprehend Adair's treachery, if it
had gone so far as treachery. Adair had found his wife fretful--she had
always been crying and hanging round his neck. Here he had found
companionship, secret laughter and forgetfulness. The world owed any
woman a large debt of liberty who could give men that. Maisie was the
kind of woman who could bury twenty husbands and go out next morning to
meet the twenty-first. What was far more amazing, she could do it
without frivolity or loss of self-respect. She lived a day at a time.
She made you feel, the moment you met her, that that was the only
tolerable way of living. The excuse for her philosophy was its success.
She was an expert in happiness--so expert that she could communicate her
secret without waste of words. Probably for most men words were not
necessary; for them their happiness was herself.

From her end of the couch Maisie smiled at Tabs dreamily. "You're
persistent when you want anything. I suppose you always get your
desires?"

"The little things, yes," he replied. "But the big things--they evade
me."

"You mean Terry."

She said it without change of tone or expression, with the same happy
smile curling up the corners of her uncruel mouth. It was disconcerting
to have his private humiliations referred to so frankly, as though they
were fitting subjects for casual conversation. But, after all, he
reminded himself, his business there was to discuss her equally private
affairs. He was hardly in a position to resent anything she might say.
It was a duel, and she had drawn first blood. He was quick to see that
her purpose in introducing Terry was to gain an advantage while she
postponed the inevitable discussion of Adair.

She didn't give him a chance to reply. "I know all about you and Terry,"
she continued, "and about Braithwaite, too, for the matter of that.
Perhaps why Terry evades you is because she isn't one of your really big
things. You may have mistaken her for a big thing. If she is one of your
truly big things, you'll get her. You're one of the few men who get all
that they desire."

It was possible that she was trying to flatter him; nevertheless,
against his will, the certainty of her way of talking impressed him.
"What makes you think that I get everything that I desire?"

She