yer. I am too lucky at holding the cards, and play each one
to win. I am lavish with trumps. I delight to lead them first hand
round, but I have not the courage of my convictions, for I always feel
little quivers of fear when I do it, because when my trumps and aces
are gone, then I'm gone too. I have no skill in finesse, in the
subtlety, the delicate moves which are the inherent qualities of a
game of whist. To tell the brutal truth, I play my own hand. Could
anything be worse, dear shade of Sarah Battle, even if I do win? In
short, my manner of playing whist is the way some men, most men, make
love.

Now you know, brothers--I call you brothers to prove how very friendly
my feelings are towards you, even if I do show you up from our
side--you know that a good whist-player is only slightly interested in
the play of the great cards. His fine instinct comes into play when
the delicate points of the game are in evidence; when it is a question
of who holds the seven of clubs, if he leads the six in the last hand,
or of the lurking-place of the thirteenth trump. I never can remember
anything below the jack, and I give up playing whist forever at least
once every month. But I am so weak that I return to it again and
again, as a smoker does to his brier-wood. I feel partly vexed and
partly sorry for myself when I realize that I cannot play--I can only
win. I have seen men win very superior girls, but they have done it in
a manner which would disgust a good whist-player. Yet they, too, keep
on with their indifferent love-making with the same fatal human
weakness which sees me brave the baleful light in my partner's eyes
night after night--when I am in a whist-playing community. Many men
make love because the girl is convenient and they happen to think
about it. It never would occur to me to hunt up three people at a
country-house and ask them to play whist. But if three are at a table,
and there is no one else, I drop into the vacant place, which could be
filled much better by a skilled player, with pathetic willingness.

I wonder if a man ever deliberately made up his mind to marry, and
then hunted up his ideal girl? Alas, alas, if he did, I never heard of
him! But I have seen scores of them drop into vacant chairs at the
girls' sides, and make love just because they were handy.

We hate this "handy" love-making, we girls. You needn't think we don't
know it when we hear it. Sometimes we are not so stupid as we pretend.
But