Page:The cream of the jest; a comedy of evasions (IA creamofjestcomed00caberich).pdf/218

 little of these soft-lipped girls and women, when everything was said

Yet there had been—he counted—yes, time had known eight chaste and comely gentlewomen, in all, who had "given themselves to him," as the hackneyed phrase was. These eight affairs, at any event, had conformed to every tradition, and had been as thorough-going as might romantically be expected: but nothing much seemed to have come of them; and he did not feel in the upshot very well acquainted with their heroines. His sole emotion toward them nowadays was that of mild dislike. But six of them—again to utilize a venerable conjunction of words—had "deceived their husbands" for the caresses of an impecunious Kennaston; and the other two had anticipatorily "deceived" the husbands they took later: so that they must, he reflected, have loved Felix Kennaston sincerely. He was quite certain, though, that he had never loved any one of them as he had always wanted to love. No one of these women had given him what he sought in vain. Kennaston had felt this lack of success dispiritedly when, with soft arms about him, it