Chapter XXIII

Yates stood for a moment regarding the dejected attitude of his friend.

"Hello, old man!" he cried, "you have the most 'hark-from-the-tombs' appearance I ever saw. What's the matter?"

Renmark looked up.

"Oh, it's you, is it?"

"Of course it's I. Been expecting anybody else?"

"No. I have been waiting for you, and thinking of a variety of things."

"You look it. Well, Renny, congratulate me, my boy. She's mine, and I'm hers--which are two ways of stating the same delightful fact. I'm up in a balloon, Renny. I'm engaged to the prettiest, sweetest, and most delightful girl there is from the Atlantic to the Pacific. What d'ye think of that? Say, Renmark, there's nothing on earth like it. You ought to reform and go in for being in love. It would make a man of you. Champagne isn't to be compared to it. Get up here and dance, and don't sit there like a bear nursing a sore paw. Do you comprehend that I am to be married to the darlingest girl that lives?"

"God help her!"

"That's what I say. Every day of her life, bless her! But I don't say it quite in that tone, Renmark. What's the matter with you? One would think you were in love with the girl yourself, if such a thing were possible."

"Why is it not possible?"

"If that is a conundrum, I can answer it the first time. Because you are a fossil. You are too good, Renny; therefore dull and uninteresting. Now, there is nothing a woman likes so much as to reclaim a man. It always annoys a woman to know that the man she is interested in has a past with which she has had nothing to do. If he is wicked and she can sort of make him over, like an old dress, she revels in the process. She flatters herself she makes a new man of him, and thinks she owns that new man by right of manufacture. We owe it to the sex, Renny, to give 'em a chance at reforming us. I have known men who hated tobacco take to smoking merely to give it up joyfully for the sake of the women they loved. Now, if a man is perfect to begin with, what is a dear, ministering angel of a woman to do with him? Manifestly nothing. The trouble with you, Renny, is that you are too evidently ruled by a good and well-trained conscience, and naturally all women you meet intuitively see this, and have no use for you. A little wickedness would be the making of you."

"You think, then, that if a man's impulse is to do what his conscience tells him is wrong, he should follow his impulse, and not his conscience?"

"You state the case with unnecessary seriousness. I believe that an occasional blow-out is good for a man. But if you ever have an impulse of that kind, I think you should give way to it for once, just to see how it feels. A man who is too good gets conceited about himself."

"I half believe you are