“Ah, I don’t; I didn’t mean that they were.  But wouldn’t it be a little pathetic if, after all that we’ve seen going on, his coming here expressly on her account, and his perfect devotion to her for the past two weeks, it should end in nothing?”

“Two weeks isn’t a very long time to settle the business of a lifetime.”

“No.”

“Perhaps she’s proposed delay; a little further acquaintance.”

“Oh, of course that would be perfectly right.  Do you think she did?”

“Not if she’s as wise as the rest of us would have been at her age.  But I think she ought.”

“Yes?” said Miss Cotton semi-interrogatively.

“Do you think his behaviour last night would naturally impress her with his wisdom and constancy?”

“No, I can’t say that it would, but—­”

“And this Alice of yours is rather a severe young person.  She has her ideas, and I’m afraid they’re rather heroic.  She’d be just with him, of course.  But there’s nothing a man dreads so much as justice—­some men.”

“Yes,” pursued Miss Cotton, “but that very disparity—­I know they’re very unlike—­don’t you think—­”

“Oh yes, I know the theory about that.  But if they were exactly alike in temperament, they’d be sufficiently unlike for the purposes of counterparts.  That was arranged once for all when ’male and female created He them.’  I’ve no doubt their fancy was caught by all the kinds of difference they find in each other; that’s just as natural as it’s silly.  But the misunderstanding, the trouble, the quarrelling, the wear and tear of spirit, that they’d have to go through before they assimilated—­it makes me tired, as the boys say.  No:  I hope, for the young man’s own sake, he’s got his conge.”

“But he’s so kind, so good—­”

“My dear, the world is surfeited with kind, good men.  There are half a dozen of them at the other end of the piazza smoking; and there comes another to join them,” she added, as a large figure, semicircular in profile, advanced itself from a doorway toward a vacant chair among the smokers.  “The very soul of kindness and goodness.”  She beckoned toward her husband, who caught sight of her gesture.  “Now I can tell you all his mental processes.  First, surprise at seeing some one beckoning; then astonishment that it’s I, though who else should beckon him?—­then wonder what I can want; then conjecture that I may want him to come here; then pride in his conjecture; rebellion; compliance.”

The ladies were in a scream of laughter as Mr. Brinkley lumbered heavily to their group.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Do you believe in broken engagements?  Now quick—­off-hand!”

“Who’s engaged?”

“No matter.”

“Well, you know Punch’s advice to those about to marry?”

“I know—­chestnuts,” said his wife scornfully.  They dismissed each other with tender bluntness, and he went in to get a match.