ple in general do not recognize this fact. He is
an inarticulate genius. Men feel that he is in some occult way different
from them, yet they do not know just how. Nor will they ever take the
trouble to study out a problem in human nature, either in man or woman,
unless they are philosophers.

Women care for Percival in proportion to their intuitions. You must
comprehend him synthetically. You cannot dissect him. With generous
appreciation and sympathetic encouragement, Percival's genius would become
articulate. To discover it he must needs marry--but he must wait for the
hundredth woman. This, of course, he will not do. If he can find a Flossy,
he will go down on his knees to her, when she ought to be on hers to him;
metaphorical knees, in this case.

I am very much afraid he has found her. He is in love. You can always tell
when a man is in love, Tabby, especially if he is not the lovering kind
and has never been troubled in that way before. The best kind of love has
to be so intuitive that it often is grandly, heroically awkward. Depend
upon it, Tabby, a man who is dainty and pretty and unspeakably smooth when
he makes love to you, has had altogether too much practice.

Percival knows that he is in love--that is one great step in the right
direction. But he is in that first partly alarmed, partly curious frame of
mind that a man would be in who touched his broken arm for the first time
to see how much it hurt. Whoever she is, he loves her deeply and thinks
she never can care for him. He did not tell me this. If he thought that I
knew it, he would wonder how in the world I found it out. Women are born
lovers. They have to do the bulk of the loving all through the world. I
told Percival so. At first he seemed surprised; then he said that it was
true. I believe some men could go through life without loving anybody on
earth. But the woman never lived who could do it. A woman must love
something--even if she hasn't anything better to love than a pug-dog or
herself.

"Why aren't women the choosers?" said Percival seriously. The same
question twice in one day, Tabby. "Whenever I think of understanding the
question of love, I wish for a woman's intuitions. Women know so much
about it. They absorb the whole question at a glance. But, with so many
different kinds of women, how is a man to know anything?"

I always liked Percival, but a woman never likes a man so well as when
he acknowledges his helplessness in her particul