ngainly
looking thing in a derby hat and hideous clothes, with knuckly hands and
padded shoulders and a rough chin."

"Thank you," said the bachelor sweetly. "I see--as in a looking glass.
Evidently our countenances--"

"Pooh!" jeered the widow, "your countenances just don't count. That's
all. What profiteth it a man though he have the face of an Apollo if he
have the legs of a Caliban? A woman never bothers about a man's face.
It's his figure that attracts her. She will forgive weak eyes and a
cut-off chin twice as quickly as weak shoulders and cut-off legs."

"That's why we pad them--the shoulders," explained the bachelor.

"You wouldn't need to," retorted the widow, "if you knew how to play the
winning card."

"What IS the winning card?" implored the bachelor, leaning across the
table anxiously.

The widow laid down her soup spoon and bent to arrange the violets in
her belt meditatively.

"Well," she said, "Sir Walter Raleigh played it and it won him a title;
and Mr. Mantellini played it and it kept him in spending money and fancy
waistcoats for years without his doing a stroke of work; and Louis
XIV.--but oh, pshaw! You know all about that. Briefly speaking, a man's
winning card is his knowledge of how to treat a woman. Specifically, it
is a tender, solicitous, protecting manner. A woman just loves to be
'protected,' whether there is anything to be protected from or not. She
loves to know that you are anxious for her safety and comfort, even when
there is no cause in the world for your anxiety. She loves to have you
wait on her, even when there is a room full of hired waiters about. She
loves to be treated like an adorable, cunning, helpless child, even when
she is five feet ten and weighs a cool two hundred. She delights in
having a mental cloak laid down for her to walk over and every time you
do it she secretly knights you."

"It sounds awfully easy," said the bachelor.

"But it isn't," retorted the widow, "if it were all men would try
it--and all men would be perfectly irresistible."

"Well, aren't they?" asked the bachelor, innocently. "I thought
they----"

"The winning way, the irresistible masculine manner," pursued the widow,
ignoring the interruption, "is something subtle and inborn. It can't be
put on or varnished over. It is neither a pose nor a patent. It is the
gift of one of the good fairies at birth. If it is going to be trained
into a man he must be caught and schooled very early--say,