make love because the girl is convenient and they happen to think
about it. It never would occur to me to hunt up three people at a
country-house and ask them to play whist. But if three are at a table,
and there is no one else, I drop into the vacant place, which could be
filled much better by a skilled player, with pathetic willingness.

I wonder if a man ever deliberately made up his mind to marry, and
then hunted up his ideal girl? Alas, alas, if he did, I never heard of
him! But I have seen scores of them drop into vacant chairs at the
girls' sides, and make love just because they were handy.

We hate this "handy" love-making, we girls. You needn't think we don't
know it when we hear it. Sometimes we are not so stupid as we pretend.
But we never let you see that we are clever enough to understand you,
because you don't want us to. And I must say that I cannot blame you.
If we girls are pretending to you that we have been waiting all our
lives for just you, we dislike to have you discover that we have
employed those years of waiting very satisfactorily to ourselves, so
much so that a casual observer would not have suspected the emptiness
of them.

So your funny little pretences are all very well, provided you do not
let us catch you in them. Only--possibly you do not know how many
times we do catch you. That is one of the chief points. You never know
how many times we see through you and beyond, and know just why you
did certain things much better than you yourselves know it. Of course,
it would not be wise for us to tell you this individually, for that
would break up the meeting; but there is no harm in letting you know
in bulk.