Page:Night and Day (1919).pdf/427

 mystery, difficulty, and uncertainty of dealing with the other sex, intercourse with one’s own is apt to have a composing and even ennobling influence, since plain speaking is possible and subterfuges of no avail. Rodney, too, was much in need of a confidant; Katharine, despite her promises of help, had failed him at the critical moment; she had gone off with Denham; she was, perhaps, tormenting Denham as she had tormented him. How grave and stable he seemed, speaking little, and walking firmly, ,compared with what Rodney knew of his own torments and indecisions! He began to cast about for some way of telling the story of his relations with Katharine and Cassandra that would not lower him in Denham’s eyes. It then occurred to him that, perhaps, Katharine herself had confided in Denham; they had something in common; it was likely that they had discussed him that very afternoon. The desire to discover what they had said of him now came uppermost in his mind. He recalled Katharine’s laugh; he remembered that she had gone, laughing, to walk with Denham.

“Did you stay long after we'd left?” he asked abruptly.

“No. We went back to my house.”

This seemed to confirm Rodney’s belief that he had been discussed. He turned over the unpalatable idea for a while, in silence.

“Women are incomprehensible creatures, Denham!” he then exclaimed.

“Um,” said Denham, who seemed to himself possessed of complete understanding, not merely of women, but of the entire universe. He could read Rodney, too, like a book. He knew that he was unhappy, and he pitied him, and wished to help him.

“You say something and they—fly into a passion. Or for no reason at all, they laugh. I take it that no amount of education will” The remainder of the sentence was lost in the high wind, against which they