nd not the jilters, it will be
certainly for our interest that the ladies should spare our feelings by
disenchanting us,--saying, as it were, the charm backward that first
charmed us. He who would teach the ladies the method and enlist their
tender hearts in its behalf would be, perhaps, the greatest benefactor
his much-jilted and heart-sore sex ever had. Then, indeed, with the
heart-breakers of both sexes pledged to so humane a practice, there
would be no more any such thing as sorrow over unrequited affections,
and the poets and novelists would beg their bread."

"That is a millennial dream, Potts," responded Merril. "You may possibly
persuade the men to make themselves disagreeable for pity's sake, but it
is quite too much to expect that a woman would deliberately put herself
in an unbecoming light, if it were to save a world from its sins."

"Perhaps it is," said Potts pensively; "but considering what perfectly
inexhaustible resources of disagreeableness there are in the best of us
and the fairest of women, it seems a most gratuitous cruelty that any
heart should suffer when a very slight revelation would heal its hurt.
We can't help people suffering because we are so faulty and imperfect,
but we might at least see that nobody ever had a pang from thinking us
better than we are."

"Look at Hunt!" said Sturgis. "He does n't open his mouth, but drinks in
Potts's wisdom as eagerly as if he did n't know it was a pump that never
stops."

There was a general laugh among those who glanced up in time to catch
the expression of close attention on Hunt's face.

"Probably he 's deliberating on the application of the Potts patent
painless cure to some recent victim of that yellow mustache and goatee,"
suggested Merril, with the envy of a smooth-faced youth for one more
favored.

Hunt, whose face had sprung back like a steel-trap to its usual
indifferent expression, smiled nonchalantly at Merril's remark. One
whose reticent habit makes his secrets so absolutely secure as Hunt's
private affairs always were is stirred to amusement rather than
trepidation by random guesses which come near the truth.

"If I were situated as Merril flatteringly suggests, I should enjoy
nothing better than such an experiment," he replied deliberately. "It
would be quite a novel sensation to revolutionize one's ordinary rule of
conduct so as to make a point of seeming bad or stupid. There would be
as much psychology in it as in an extra term, a