'Oh, I don't know.'

'Twenty?'

'Well--rather more than that, I think.'

'Thirty?'

'Quite thirty.'

'Forty?'

'Not more than forty, I think.'

Maude sat aghast at the depths of his depravity.

'Let me see: you are twenty-seven now, so you have loved four women a year since you were seventeen.'

'If you reckon it that way,' said Frank, 'I am afraid that it must have been more than forty.'

'It's dreadful,' said Maude, and began to cry.

Frank knelt down in front of her and kissed her hands. She had sweet little plump hands, very soft and velvety.

'You make me feel such a brute,' said he. 'Anyhow, I love you now with all my heart and mind and soul.'

'Forty-firstly and lastly,' she sobbed, half laughing and half crying. Then she pulled his hair to rea.s.sure him.

'I can't be angry with you,' said she. 'Besides, it would be ungenerous to be angry when you tell me things of your own free will.

You are not forced to tell me. It is very honourable of you. But I do wish you had taken an interest in me first.'

'Well, it was not so fated. I suppose there are some men who are quite good when they are bachelors. But I don't believe they are the best men. They are either archangels upon earth--young Gladstones and Newmans--or else they are cold, calculating, timid, un-virile creatures, who will never do any good. The first cla.s.s must be splendid. I never met one except in memoirs. The others I don't want to meet.'

Women are not interested in generalities.

'Were they nicer than me?' she asked.

'Who?'

'Those forty women.'

'No, dear, of course not. Why are you laughing?'

'Well, it came into my head how funny it would be, if the forty were all gathered into one room, and you were turned loose in the middle of them.'

'Funny!' Frank e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. Women have such extraordinary ideas of humour. Maude laughed until she was quite tired.

'It doesn't strike you as comic?' she cried at last.

'No, it doesn't,' he answered coldly.

'Of course it wouldn't,' said she, and went off into another ripple of pretty contralto laughter. There is a soft, deep, rich laugh, which some women have, that is the sweetest sound in Nature.

'When you have quite finished,' said he huffily. Her jealousy was much more complimentary than her ridicule.

'All right now. Don't be cross. If I didn't laugh I should cry.

I'm so sorry if I have annoyed you.' He had gone back to his chair, so she paid him a flying visit. 'Satisfied?'

'Not quite.'

'Now?'

'All right. I forgive you.'

'That's funny too. Fancy YOU forgiving ME after all these confessions. But you never loved one of them all as you love me.'

'Never.'

'Swear it.'

'I do swear it.'

'Morally, and what do you call it, and the other?'

'Not one of them.'

'And never will again?'

'Never.'

'Good boy for ever and ever?'

'For ever and ever.'

'And the forty were horrid?'

'No, hang it, Maude, I can't say that.'

She pouted and hung her head.

'You do like them better, then?'

'How absurd you are, Maude! If I had liked one better, I should have married her.'

'Well, yes, I suppose you would. You must have taken a deeper interest in me than in the others, since you married me. I hadn't thought of that.'

'Silly old girl! Of course I liked you best. Let us drop the thing, and never talk about it any more.'

'Have you their photographs?'