"Do you think so?" She was glad to be impersonal again. "I imagined a little indifference piqued a man to further effort."
"The heat of propinquity feeds the flame of love," oracularly.
"I do not agree with you there, Doctor. I think men grow tired of women's solicitude and company."
"Precious few have the experience! But I agree with you that most married people see too much of each other. Men seem to realize the fact. That is why they go on hunting and fishing trips. Do they hunt? A few of the party, but the rest sit around and enjoy themselves, because they are a party of _men_. Women will never understand this feeling--this insulation, so to speak; it is the cause of much of the unhappiness we see. Most men fall short of the standard a woman demands from her husband. The first rapturous love, with its utterance and reciprocity, is expected to last after years of intimacy. In love, as in a dinner, comes the gradual relaxation, the ease of well-being, which is the greatest compliment (if she but knew it) to a woman's power to evoke and to hold love. She has not lost it; to reiterate what is a self-evident fact seems to the man unnecessary. A happy married life is one of content, comradeship, loyalty. Words are not needed where such conditions exist."
"I'll remember all you have said," sighed the girl, "but I shall never have an opportunity to prove it!"
"Nonsense, girl!" The comforter rose as he heard Charlie's voice in the outer hall. "You are depressed to-night. Life will look brighter to-morrow. These tangled trails are going to be straightened--I'm sure of it! Love will crystallize that Chinese legend into reality--for you and for Phil. Good-night! Good-night!"
For years Danvers had shunned women. Yet he had not spent his life in melancholy over Eva's defection; known to many, but understood by few, his real nature withdrew from the light. His intuitive attitude toward strangers of either sex was a negative indifference that gave him time to estimate their character or their motives--a habit desirable enough in business, but unsatisfactory in social life.
The growth of his regard for Winifred had been so gradual that he had not thought it might prove to be love. Her unaffected interest in the only life he had enjoyed--the old days at Fort Macleod--had roused him from apathy, and her comprehension of his motives and activities exhilarated him. He delighted in her intelligent comradeship when discussing the real world.