" he went on, "I knew you'd got one chance, and I meant you to
have it. I meant you to make the most of it. There are things, Furnival,
I haven't got the hang of--yet--little, little things like breeding and
good looks, where you might get the pull of me still if you had a free
hand.

"Well, I gave you a free hand.

"You needn't thank me. I wasn't thinking of you so much. I was thinking
of Viola. I wanted to be perfectly fair to _her_. If there _was_ a chance
of her liking you better than she liked me, and being happier with you, I
wanted her to have her chance. I wanted, you see, to be rather more than
fair. If I was going to win this game I was going to win it hands over,
not just to sneak in on a doubtful point. I wanted Viola to know what she
was doing. I wanted her to see exactly what she was giving up if she
married me--to go home and see it all over again in case she had
forgotten.

"And of course I was thinking of myself too. I'm an egoist. For my own
sake I wanted her to be quite sure she hadn't any sort of hankering after
you."

I said if it was any comfort to him he could be. Viola hadn't any
hankering after me at all. This--if he cared to know it--was the third
time that I had proposed to her and been turned down.

He said he _did_ care to know it, very much. It was most important.

"I," he said, "have never proposed to her at all.

"That," he went on, "is just the one risk I wouldn't take.

"And there," he explained, "is where I've scored. I knew that Viola is
obstinate, and that if she starts by turning you down she'll keep it up
out of sheer cussedness.

"So I never let her start. Women," he generalized, "admire success. If I
were to give you your innings all over again, Furnival--and I will if you
like--you couldn't make anything of them with those three howlers to your
account. There isn't any record of failure against _me_. Good God! D'you
suppose _I_'d be such a damn fool as to muff it three times with the same
woman? Not me!"

I said he needn't rub it in.

He said he was rubbing it in for my good, so that I shouldn't go and do
the same thing next time.

"Because--_now_ we're coming to the point--there will be a next time for
you, Furnival. That's why I don't even pretend to be sorry for you.
There'll be other women. But there aren't any next times for me, and
there aren't any other women. This--I mean _she_--was my one chance. It
was pretty jumpy work, I can tell you, sitting tight and