_ CHAPTER VIII. AFTER LOVE----(?)
"WHY is it," asked the widow, swinging her chatelaine pensively as she strolled down the avenue beside the bachelor, "that the man who is most in love is most apt to get over it suddenly?"
The bachelor withdrew his eyes from the pretty pair of ankles across the street and glanced down at the widow with the lenient smile of superior wisdom.
"Why is it," he retorted, "that the man who drinks the most champagne at dinner has the worst headache next morning?"
"That isn't any explanation at all, Mr. Travers." The widow's chatelaine jingled impatiently. "Champagne is intoxicating."
"So is love."
"Champagne leaves you with an--an all-gone feeling."
"And love leaves you with--'that tired feeling'."
"Not me," said the widow promptly, "I always feel exhilarated after--after----"
"Afterwards," finished the bachelor helpfully. "But you're a woman. It's the man who has the 'tired feeling'."
"What is it like?" persisted the widow.
"Well," the bachelor flipped his cane thoughtfully, "did you ever eat a fourteen course dinner, and then go to Sherry's afterward for supper and then go to Delmonico's for a snack and to Rector's for----"
"I've been through it," sighed the widow.
"You didn't want any more, did you?" asked the bachelor sympathetically. "That's the way a man feels when he's had enough of love--or a woman."
"But--but love isn't indigestible."
"Too much of anything--love or dinner or champagne--is apt to take away your appetite. And too much of a woman is sure to make you hate the sight of her."
The widow's chatelaine was dancing madly in the afternoon sunlight.
"I don't suppose," she said witheringly, "that it would be possible for a woman to get too much of a man!"
"No," agreed the bachelor cheerfully, as he squinted at another pair of pretty ankles, "women are sentimental topers. They sip their wine or their sentiment slowly and comfortably; they don't gulp it down like a man. That's why the man has usually finished the bottle before the woman has touched her glass. He is ready to turn out the lights and put an end to the affair just as she has begun to get really interested. But," and the bachelor turned suddenly upon the widow, "who is the man? Show him to me!" and he brought his cane down fiercely on the sidewalk.
"Wh-what man?" asked the widow, turning pink to the tips of her ears.
"The man who has jilt--gotten over it. I don't see how it's possible," he added thoughtfully, "with you."
"Me!" The widow's voice was as chill and crisp as the autumn air. "I wish," she added musingly, "that I knew how to patch it up."
"That's right!" retorted the bachelor. "Try to revive his interest in champagne by offering it to him--the morning after. What he needs, my dear lady, is--ice. When he has had a little ice and a little tabasco sauce----"
"He may want more champagne?" asked the widow hopefully.
"Yes," replied the bachelor, swinging his cane cheerfully, "but not from the same bottle. Will women ever learn," he mused, "that it is as impossible to revive a man's interest in a woman he has completely gotten over loving as to make him want stale champagne with all the fizz gone out of it?"
"I don't see why," said the widow. "A woman often falls in love with the same man twice."
"Because she never falls too much in love with him--once," explained the bachelor.
The widow's chatelaine rattled indignantly.
"Nonsense!" she cried, "A woman's love is always stronger and deeper than a man's."
"But it isn't so effervescent. She is a natural miser and she hoards her feelings. A man flings his sentiment about like a prodigal and naturally when it's all gone--there isn't any left."
"Is that when he gets the 'tired feeling?'" inquired the widow sympathetically.
"Yes," said the bachelor, "and nothing is worse than waking up in the morning with a dark brown taste in your mouth--to find the woman standing before you offering you more champagne. But she always does. A woman never seems to know when the logical conclusion of a love affair has arrived. She clings with all her strength to the tattered remnants of sentiment and shuts her eyes and tries to make believe it isn't morning, when she ought to go away----"
"And let him sleep it off," suggested the widow.
"That's it," agreed the bachelor, "I once knew a man who was infatuated with a woman who used attar of roses on her gloves and things. When he woke up--I beg your pardon--after they had broken off, he never could abide the smell of roses."
"I suppose," said the widow, holding her muff against her cheek sentimentally, "it reminded him of all the tender little tete-a-tetes and moonlight nights and the way her hair curled about her forehead and the way she used to smile at him, and of her gloves and her ruffles and the color of her eyes and----"
"It didn't!" said the bachelor emphatically. "It nauseated him. It's the woman who always remembers the pleasant part of a love affair. A man remembers only--the next morning--and the hard time he had getting out of it."
"And the headache," added the widow.
"And the 'tired feeling'."
"And the other woman," suggested the widow contemptuously.
"Yes," agreed the bachelor, "the other woman, of course. But," he added thoughtfully, "if a woman could only take the hint in time----"
"What time?" asked the widow. "When a man begins to be late for his engagements?"
"Yes; or to forget them altogether."
"And to make excuses and enlarge on his rush of business."
"And to seem abstracted during the conversation."
"And to stop noticing her jokes or her frocks or the way she does her hair."
"And to stay away from places where he could be sure to meet her."
"But," protested the widow, "they always make such plausible excuses."
"Nothing," said the bachelor confidently, "will keep a man away from a woman except a lack of interest in her----"
"Or an interest in another woman," added the widow promptly. "But," she concluded tentatively, "there ought to be a cure for it."
"For what? The other woman?"
"That tired feeling, Mr. Travers."
"There isn't any cure," replied the bachelor promptly, "but there's a good preventive. When you were a very little girl," he continued patronizingly, "and liked jam----"
"I like it now!" declared the widow.
"How did your mother manage to preserve your interest in it?"
"She took the jam away, Mr. Travers, and put it on the top shelf always--just before I had had enough."
"Well, that's the way to preserve a man's interest in a woman," declared the bachelor. "Deal yourself out to him in homeopathic doses. Put yourself on the top shelf, where it is hard for him to get at you. Feed him sugar out of a teaspoon; don't pass him the whole sugar bowl. Then he will be always begging for more. One only wants more of anything that one can't get enough of, you know. Now, if a woman would use her judgment----"
"As if a woman in love had any judgment!" mocked the widow.
"That's it!" sighed the bachelor, "She never has. She just lays the whole feast before the man, flings all her charms at his head at once, surfeits him with the champagne of her wit and lets him eat all the sugar off his cake right away. The love affair springs up like a mushroom and--"
"Oh, well," interrupted the widow impatiently, "I like mushroom love affairs. I like a man who can fling himself headlong into an affair and----"
"Of course you do!" sighed the bachelor, "every woman does. The sensible and temperate man who will love her all his life----"
"A little!" said the widow contemptuously.
"Well, a little is enough," retorted the bachelor, "at a time."
"That depends," said the widow, "on how many times--one is loved. There are some women who are so saving of their sugar and frugal with their sentiment that they never know the real joy of a grand passion or of having a man love them properly. What's the use of having money if you are always going to keep it in the bank?" she added conclusively.
The bachelor looked down at her and said nothing. There was a smile of hopeless resignation in his eyes.
"Here we are!" cried the widow, suddenly stopping in front of a tall brownstone house and holding out her hand politely. "So glad to have----"
"Aren't you going to invite me in?" demanded the bachelor, in astonishment.
The widow lifted her eyebrows in faint surprise.
"What," she asked sweetly, "after----"
"You broke an engagement with me last night!" blurted out the bachelor, looking the widow straight in the eyes. But the widow shifted her gaze to the park across the street and swung her chatelaine indifferently.
"And you weren't 'at home' to me the day before yesterday and you were out of town for a week before that; and you promised me that this afternoon----"
"Did I?" asked the widow, looking up innocently.
"Yes, you did!" declared the bachelor.
"Oh, well," laughed the widow, as she tripped up the steps with a wave of her muff, "I was only showing you the sugar bowl; but I didn't mean you could have another spoonful; besides," she added, turning round and talking through the tunnel in her muff, "there's somebody waiting inside."
"Who?" demanded the bachelor.
"The man with the 'tired feeling'," said the widow.
"But," began the bachelor in a puzzled voice, "if he is tired of--of you----"
"Me!" the widow laughed. "He isn't tired of me, Mr. Travers. It's--the other woman. He came to me for--for----"
"A bracer?" suggested the bachelor. "What are you going to give him?" he added.
"Vinegar, mustard, pepper, salt," said the widow counting off the buttons of her coat, child fashion.
The bachelor looked at her out of the corner of his eye.
"Anything else?" he asked.
"A little--ice," said the widow, gazing out over the park.
"Anything else?" persisted the bachelor.
The widow studied her muff musingly.
"Oh--I don't know," she said, doubtfully.
"Any--sugar?" demanded the bachelor.
The widow shook her head smilingly.
"No," she said, "I'm saving that for another----"
"Another!"
"Another time," said the widow ambiguously as she let the door close softly behind her. _