Philosophizers on this topic say that a man ought always to be able to tell by a woman’s demeanor towards him whether she is favorably inclined, and that he need run no risk.  Little signs, the eyes alone, draw people together, and make formal language superfluous.  This theory is abundantly sustained by examples, and we might rest on it if all women knew their own minds, and if, on the other hand, they could always tell whether a man was serious before he made a definite avowal.  There is another notion, fortunately not yet extinct, that the manliest thing a man can do is to take his life in his hand, pay the woman he loves the highest tribute in his power by offering her his heart and name, and giving her the definite word that may be the touchstone to reveal to herself her own feeling.  In our conventional life women must move behind a mask in a world of uncertainties.  What wonder that many of them learn in their defensive position to play a game, and sometimes experiment upon the honest natures of their admirers!  But even this does not absolve the chivalrous man from the duty of frankness and explicitness.  Life seems ideal in that far country where the handsome youth stops his carriage at the gate of the vineyard, and says to the laughing girl carrying a basket of grapes on her head, “My pretty maid, will you marry me?” And the pretty maid, dropping a courtesy, says, “Thank you, sir; I am already bespoken,” or “Thank you; I will consider of it when I know you better.”

Not for a moment, I suppose, is a woman ever ignorant of a man’s admiration of her, however uncertain she may be of his intentions, and it was with an unusual flutter of the heart that Margaret received Mr. Lyon that afternoon.  If she had doubts, they were dissipated by a certain constraint in his manner, and the importance he seemed to be attaching to his departure, and she was warned to go within her defenses.  Even the most complaisant women like at least the appearance of a siege.

“I’m off tomorrow,” he said, “for Washington.  You know you recommended it as necessary to my American education.”

“Yes.  We send Representatives and strangers there to be educated.  I have never been there myself.”

“And do you not wish to go?”

“Very much.  All Americans want to go to Washington.  It is the great social opportunity; everybody there is in society.  You will be able to see there, Mr. Lyon, how a republican democracy manages social life.

“Do you mean to say there are no distinctions?”

“Oh, no; there are plenty of official distinctions, and a code that is very curious and complicated, I believe.  But still society is open.”

“It must be—­pardon me—­a good deal like a mob.”

“Well, our mobs of that sort are said to be very well behaved.  Mr. Morgan says that Washington is the only capital in the world where the principle of natural selection applies to society; that it is there shown for the first time that society is able to take care of itself in the free play of democratic opportunities.”