A Book o' Nine Tales Part 6

_He._ You are cynical.

_She._ Oh, no. Cynicism is like a cravat, very becoming to a man if properly worn, but always setting ill upon a lady.

_He._ Did you learn that, also, in Britany? It is a country of enlightenment. Would that my wife had gone there.

_She._ Or her husband!

_He._ You are keen. Her husband learned bitter truths enough by staying at home. I am evidently your complement; for I had a wedding-ring sent back to me.

_She._ And why?

_He._ Why? Why? Who ever knows a woman's reason! Because I refused, perhaps, to call black white, to say I was pleased by what made me angry; because-- No; on the whole, since I am not making love to her, it is hardly worth while to lie to a peasant from Britany, though it is of course necessary to sustain the social fictions with people nearer home. It was because the wedding-ring was a fetter that constrained my wife, body and soul; because I was as inflexible as steel. My purposes, my views, my beliefs were the Procrustean bed upon which every act of hers was measured. _Voila tout!_

_She._ I understand, I think.

_He._ Oh, I have learned well enough where the blame lay in the three years since she left me.

_She._ Three years!

_He._ Why do you start?

_She._ It is three years, too, since I--

_He._ Who are you?

_She._ It is no matter; my husband is far from here.

_He._ That is more than I can say of my wife.

_She._ Where is she, then?

_He._ Heaven knows; not I. But let that go. Why may we not be useful to each other? Our cases are similar; we are both lonely.

_She._ And strangers.

_He._ Acquaintance is not a matter of time, but of temperament. Should we have found it possible to be so frank with one another had we been merely strangers?

_She._ You are specious.

_He._ No; only honest.

_She._ But what--

_He._ What? Why, friends.h.i.+p. We have found it possible to be frank in masks; why not out of them?

_She._ Then you propose a platonic friends.h.i.+p?

_He._ I want a woman who will be my friend, to whom I can talk freely.

There are words a man has no power or wish to say to a man, yet which must be spoken or they fester in his mind.

_She._ I am, then, to be a safety-valve.

_He._ Every man must have a woman as a lodestar; you are to be that to me.

_She._ And your wife?

_He._ My wife? She voluntarily abandoned me. I haven't seen her for three years; and surely she ought to cease to count by this time.

_She._ You are heartless.

_He._ Heartless?

_She._ You should be faithful to your lost--

_He._ Lost fiddlestick!

_She._ You are very rude!

_He._ I don't see--

_She._ And very disagreeable.

_He._ But--

_She._ If you had really loved your wife, you'd always mourn for her, whatever she did.

_He._ Good Heavens! That is like a woman. A man is expected to bear anything, everything, and if at last he does not come weeping to kiss the hand that smites him, he is heartless, forsooth! Bah! I am not a whipped puppy, thank you.

_She._ Your love was, perhaps, never distinguished by meekness?

_He._ I'm afraid not.

_She._ It might be none the worst for that. The ideal man for whom I am looking will not be too lamblike, even in love.

_He._ You look for an ideal man, then?

_She._ As closely as did Diogenes.

_He._ And your husband?

_She._ Oh, like your wife, he should, perhaps, begin not to count.

_He._ Good. We are sworn friends, then, until you find your ideal man.

_She._ If you will.

_He._ Then unmask.

_She._ Is that in the bargain?