t I fear she is beginning
to show me too much devotion!"

This seemed a great calamity to him.

"It is terribly dangerous that, Nicholas!--because you know, my dear
boy, when a woman shows absolute devotion, a man is irresistibly
impelled to offer her a back seat--it is when she appeals to his senses,
shows him caprice, and remains an insecure possession, that he will
offer her the place his mother held of highest honour."

"George, you impossible cynic!"

"Not at all--I am merely a student of human instincts and
characteristics--Half a cynic is a poor creature--A complete one has
almost reached the mercy and tolerance of Christ."

This was quite a new view of the subject--!

He went on--.

"You see, when men philosophize about women, they are generally unjust,
taking the subject from the standpoint that whatever frailties they
have, the male is at all events exempt from them. Now that is
nonsense--Neither sex is exempt--and neither sex as a rule will
contemplate or admit its failings.--For instance, the sense of abstract
truth in the noblest woman never prevents her lying _for_ her lover or
her child, yet she thinks herself quite honest--In the noblest man the
sense is so strong that it enables him to make only the one exception,
that of invariably lying _to_ the woman!"

I laughed--he puffed one of my pre-war cigars--.

"Women have no natural sense of truth--they only rise to it through
sublime effort,"--

"And men?"

"It is ingrained in them, they only sink from it to cover their natural
instincts of infidelity."

His voice was contemplative now--.

"How we lie to the little darlings, Nicholas! How we tell them we have
no time to write--when of course we have always time if we really want
to--we never are at a loss for the moments before the creatures are a
secure possession!"

"The whole thing gets back to the hunting instinct, my dear George--I
can't see that one can be blamed for it--."

"I am not blaming, I am merely analysing. Have you remarked that when a
man feels perfectly secure about the woman he will give his hours of
duty to his country, his hours of leisure to his friends who flatter
him, and the crumbs snatched from either to the poor lady of his heart!
But if she excites his senses, and remains problematic, he will skimp
his duty, neglect his friends, and snatch even hours from sleep to spend
them in her company!"

"You don't think then that there is something higher and beyond al