ace--yes, indeed I would.... But, Jose dear, if you'll
take the mature advice of fair, plump, and forty, you'll let the lesser
ambition go.

"A clever wealthy woman nearer your age, and on the edge of things--with
you for a husband, ought to carry you and herself far enough to suit
you. And there'd be more amusement in it, believe me.... And now--you
may kiss my hand--very good-humoredly and respectfully, and we'll talk
about those architects. Shall we?"

* * * * *

For twenty-four hours Querida remained a profoundly astonished man.
Examine, in retrospective, as he would, the details of the delicately
adjusted machinery which for so many years had slowly but surely turned
the interlocking cog-wheels of destiny for him, he could not find where
the trouble had been--could discover no friction caused by neglect of
lubricants; no over-oiling, either; no flaw.

Wherein lay the trouble? Based on what error was his theory that the
average man could marry anybody he chose? Just where had he
miscalculated?

He admitted that times changed very fast; that the world was spinning at
a rate that required nimble wits to keep account of its revolutions. But
his own wits were nimble, almost feminine in the rapid delicacy of their
intuition--_almost_ feminine, but not quite. And he felt, vaguely, that
there lay his mistake in engaging a woman with a woman's own weapons;
and that the only chance a man has is to perplex her with his own.

The world was spinning rapidly; times changed very fast, but not as fast
as women were changing in the Western World. For the self-sufficient
woman--the self-confident, self-sustaining individual, not only content
but actually preferring autonomy of mind and body, was a fact in which
Jose Querida had never really ever believed. No sentimentalist does or
really can. And all creators of things artistic are, basically,
sentimentalists.

Querida's almond-shaped, velvet eyes had done their share for him in his
time; they were merely part of a complex machinery which, included many
exquisitely adjusted parts which could produce at will such phenomena as
temporary but genuine sympathy and emotion: a voice controlled and
modulated to the finest nuances; a grace of body and mind that resembled
inherent delicacy; a nervous receptiveness and intelligence almost
supersensitive in its recognition of complicated ethical problems. It
was a machinery which could make of him any mann