Page:Claire Ambler (1928).djvu/224

 men—even the husbands of some of her friends—better than they did. Apparently, marriage often involved a kind of blindness.

One of the men now chattering with her, over his third cocktail, was in reality, Claire thought, a total stranger to his wife, a pretty woman twittering with a group at Mrs. Allyngton's piano. This man had tried to kiss Claire the first time he found himself alone with her, and the only reason he hadn't tried again, she knew, was that she had thereafter successfully avoided being alone with him. Two or three of the other men present, she had cause to be aware, would do the same thing if she gave them half a chance to hope that they could "get away with it." Another, an immaculate fat man, had annoyed her with confidential witticisms of double meaning until she stopped him. These were but sporadic indications of the nature of the beast, as she realized; but they certainly meant something; and her deduction was that most men were grosser and more predatory than their wives suspected. Without effort, she attracted men—attracted them sometimes to her own discomfort; but, in general, and as a woman, she believed that she did not really like them.

She attracted men, but she no longer attracted