Still further, to make those days not bad days, Miss Kate would cross our little common ground of an early evening to where I played the game on my porch.  Often I did this until dusk obscured the faces of the cards.  I faintly suspected in the course of these bird-like visits a caprice in Miss Kate to know what it might be that I preferred to the society of her mother on her own porch.  She appeared to be more curious than interested.  She promptly made those observations which the unillumined have ever considered it witty to make concerning those who play at solitaire.  But, finding that I had long ceased to be moved by these, she was friendly enough to judge the game upon its merits.  That she judged it to be stupid was neither strange nor any reflection upon the fairness of her mind.  The game—­in those profounder, rarer aspects which alone dignify it—­is not for women.  I believe that the game of cards to teach them philosophy under defeat, respect for the inevitable and a cheerful manipulation of such trifling good fortune as may befall—­instead of that wild, womanish demand for all or nothing—­has yet to be invented.  I predict of this game, moreover, if ever it be found, that it will be a game at which two, at least, must play.  Rarely have I known a woman, however rigid her integrity otherwise, who would not brazenly amend or even repeal utterly those decrees of Fate which are symbolized by the game.  She desires intensely to win, and she will not be above shifting a card or two in contravention of the known rules.  Far am I from intimating that this puts upon her the stigma of moral delinquency.  It is mere testimony, rather, to her astounding capacity for self-deception.  And this I cannot believe to be other than gracious of influence upon the intricate muddle of human association.

Miss Kate was finely the woman at those times when she deigned for a ten minutes to overlook my playing of the game.  Before I had half finished, on the first occasion, she had mastered its simple mechanism; and before I had quite finished she sought to practise upon it those methods of the world woman in games of solitaire.  She would calmly have placed a black nine on a black ten.

“But the colors must alternate,” I protested, thinking she had forgotten this important rule.

“Of course—­I know that perfectly well—­but look what a fine lot of cards that would give you.  There’s a deuce of hearts you could play up and a three of spades, and then you could go back to crossing the colors again, right away, you know, and you’d have that whole line running up to the king ready to put into that space.”

I looked at her, as she would have glided brazenly over that false play to rejoice in the true plays it permitted.  But I did not speak.  There are times, indeed, when we most honor the tongue of Shakspere by silence; emergencies to which words are so inadequate that to attempt to use them were to degrade the whole language.