I said that was all rot.  It was his beastly egoism.  He didn’t stand to lose more than I did.

He said it wasn’t a question of more or less.  And it wasn’t his egoism.  It was his sweetness and his heart-rending humility.  He’d stood to lose everything.  He’d be done for if Viola wouldn’t have him.  He couldn’t look at any other woman after her.  And he put it to me:  What other woman would look at him?  Whereas my resources were practically inexhaustible.  Almost any nice woman would know that I would give her what she wanted.  And almost any nice woman would give me what I wanted, too.  When I insisted that I didn’t see it, he said I’d see it shortly.  He gave me six months.

Viola, he declared, would never have given me what I wanted.  I could never give her what she wanted.  And he could.

He said he admitted that it was odd that he should be able to succeed where I failed; but so it was, and he went on to expound to me all the reasons for my failure.

“To begin with, you’re not her sort; or, rather, you’re too much her sort.  You with your integrity are one of the beautiful works of God, and she’s been used to that sort of beauty all her life and she’s tired of it.  But she isn’t used to me.  She never will be.  She’s never seen anything in the least like me before, and she never will see anything quite like me again as long as she lives.  I’m the queer, unexpected thing she wants and always will want.

“But let that pass.

“You couldn’t get her because you didn’t give your mind to it.  You didn’t know how to get her and you didn’t try to find out.  You set about it the wrong way.  I told you ages ago that a man’s a fool if he wants a thing and doesn’t find out how to get it.  You should have begun by trying to find out something about her.  But you didn’t try.  With all your opportunities you haven’t found out anything.  You don’t know the least thing about her.  You don’t know what she wants, you don’t know what she’s thinking, or what she’s feeling, or what she’ll do—­how she’ll behave if you propose to her three times running.  She’s told you things and you haven’t understood them or tried to understand.  Because the whole blessed time you were thinking about yourself, or what she was thinking about you, or was going to think.  Whereas I haven’t been thinking about anything but her—­I’ve been studying her straight on end for ten months and I’ve found out a little bit about her.  At any rate, I jolly well know what she wants and I jolly well know how to give it her.

“You see, I was determined to get her, and I left no stone unturned.  I took trouble.”

I suggested that I’d taken trouble enough in all conscience.  He laughed.

“You only took trouble to get her away, old man, when she wanted to be here with me.  What do you suppose I brought her here for?  Would you have ever thought of letting her come with you?  Of giving her what she wanted to that extent?  Not you!  You’d only have thought of shutting her up and protecting her for your own wretched sake—­which was the last thing she wanted.  She’d had about enough of that.”