emergency, I was only too happy.

"Men never realize the height of the pedestal where women in love place
them, nor do they know with how many perfections they are invested nor how
religiously women keep themselves deceived on the subject. They cannot
comprehend the succession of little shocks which is caused by the real man
coming in contact with the ideal. And if they did understand, they would
think that such mere trifles should not affect the genuine article of
love, and that women simply should overlook foibles, and go on loving the
damaged article just as blindly as before. But what man could view his
favorite marble tumbling from its pedestal continually, and losing first a
finger, then an arm, then a nose, and would go on setting it up each time,
admiring and reverencing in the mutilated remains the perfect creation
which first enraptured him? He wouldn't take the trouble to fill up the
nicks and glue on the lost fingers as women do to their idols. He wouldn't
even try to love it as he used to do. When it began to look too battered
up, he would say, 'Here, put this thing in the cellar and let's get it out
of the way.'"

Percival listened with specific interest, and admitted its truth with a
fair-mindedness surprising even in him.

"Do you suppose it is possible for a man ever to thoroughly understand a
woman?" he asked, with a retrospective slowness, directed, I was sure,
towards that empty-headed sweetheart of his.

"I really do not know," I said honestly. "I think if he tried with all his
might he could."

"Do you think--you know me better than any one else does--do you think
_I_ could, if I gave my whole mind to it?"

"You, if anybody." I answered him with the occasional absolute
truthfulness which occurs between a man and a woman when they are
completely lifted out of themselves. Something more than mere pleasure
shone in his eyes. It was as if I had reached his soul.

"If no man ever has been all that a woman in love really believes him, the
best a man could do would be to take care that she never found out her
mistake," he said slowly.

"Exactly," I said; "you are getting on. It is only another way of making
yourself live up to her ideal of you."

"Supposing after all, that the woman I love will have none of me," he
said, unconsciously slipping from the third person to the first.

"I wouldn't admit even the possibility if I were a man. I would besiege
the fortress. I would sit on her front doors