Page:My Dear Cornelia (1924).pdf/106

 as simply as I can with words my sense of the quite blessed outwardness and availability of this lady's self. I don't think she knew it, but—"

"But that shows how ignorant you are of women," she said, and swept me again sidelong with her gray eyes.

"But whether she knew it or not," I reasoned, "she possesses a secret of communicating happiness—a kind of happiness which I can only describe as pure serenity at concert pitch. Perhaps she was merely born in tune with some fine instrument which the rest of us rarely hear. Perhaps she is right, after all, in thinking of the art and discipline of the traditional lady and the traditional gentleman as the technique by which the true and precious selves of our fellow creatures are most likely to get themselves expressed."

"I believe," said Cornelia, "that your theory is coming out rather well, and in time for tea."

"My only reason for elaborating my theory is, that it is based upon the practice of a lady whose theory is infinitely surpassed by her art."

"Is it, indeed?" she said.

"When I got the theory built, I was planning to say that I should wish a daughter to choose for her husband neither one of the sheik-monsters who of