“Jose!  I beg your pardon!—­I truly do.  It is perfectly horrid and unspeakable of me to behave this way; but listen, child!  I am forty; I am perfectly contented not to marry again; and I don’t love you.  So, my poor Jose, what on earth am I to do if I don’t laugh a little.  I can’t weep over it you know.”

The scarlet flush faded from his olive skin.  “Alma,” he began mournfully, but she only shook her head, vigorously.

“Nonsense,” she said.  “You like me for a sufficient variety of reasons.  And to tell you the truth I suspect that I am quite as madly in love with you as you actually are with me.  No, no, Jose.  There are too many—­discrepancies—­of various kinds.  I have too little to gain!—­to be horribly frank—­and you—­alas!—­are a very cautious, very clever, and admirably sophisticated young man....  There, there!  I am not really accusing you—­or blaming you—­very much....  I’d have tried the same thing in your place—­yes, indeed I would....  But, Jose dear, if you’ll take the mature advice of fair, plump, and forty, you’ll let the lesser ambition go.

“A clever wealthy woman nearer your age, and on the edge of things—­with you for a husband, ought to carry you and herself far enough to suit you.  And there’d be more amusement in it, believe me....  And now—­you may kiss my hand—­very good-humoredly and respectfully, and we’ll talk about those architects.  Shall we?”

* * * * *

For twenty-four hours Querida remained a profoundly astonished man.  Examine, in retrospective, as he would, the details of the delicately adjusted machinery which for so many years had slowly but surely turned the interlocking cog-wheels of destiny for him, he could not find where the trouble had been—­could discover no friction caused by neglect of lubricants; no over-oiling, either; no flaw.

Wherein lay the trouble?  Based on what error was his theory that the average man could marry anybody he chose?  Just where had he miscalculated?

He admitted that times changed very fast; that the world was spinning at a rate that required nimble wits to keep account of its revolutions.  But his own wits were nimble, almost feminine in the rapid delicacy of their intuition—­almost feminine, but not quite.  And he felt, vaguely, that there lay his mistake in engaging a woman with a woman’s own weapons; and that the only chance a man has is to perplex her with his own.

The world was spinning rapidly; times changed very fast, but not as fast as women were changing in the Western World.  For the self-sufficient woman—­the self-confident, self-sustaining individual, not only content but actually preferring autonomy of mind and body, was a fact in which Jose Querida had never really ever believed.  No sentimentalist does or really can.  And all creators of things artistic are, basically, sentimentalists.