Gladys was full of womanly qualities. Some thought her to be cold and hard; but it was so untrue! That bronzed skin, that raven hair, the large eyes, the full lips… all the signs of passion were there. But I was sadly conscious that up to now I had never found the secret how to conquer her. She could refuse me, but better be a refused lover than an accepted brother.
So I was about to break the silence, when two critical, dark eyes looked at me. Gladys shook her head and smiled with reproof.
“I have a feeling that you are going to propose, Ned. I wish you wouldn’t.”
“How did you know that I was going to propose?” I asked in wonder.
“Don’t women always know? But… Ned, our friendship has been so good and so pleasant! What a pity to spoil it! Don’t you think how splendid it is that a young man and a young woman should be able to talk face to face as we have talked?”
“I don’t know, Gladys. You see, I can talk face to face with anyone. So it does not satisfy me. I want my arms round you, and your head on my breast, and… oh, Gladys…”
“You’ve spoiled everything, Ned,” she said. “Why can’t you control yourself?”
“I can’t. It’s nature. It’s love.”
“Well, I have never felt it.”
“But you must… you, with your beauty, with your soul! Oh, Gladys, you were made for love! You must love!”
“One must wait till it comes.”
“But why can’t you love me, Gladys? Is it my appearance, or what?”
“No it isn’t that,” she said with a smile. “It’s deeper.”
“My character?”
She nodded severely.
“What can I do, Gladys? Tell me, what’s wrong?”
“I’m in love with somebody else,” she said.
I jumped out of my chair.
“It’s nobody in particular,” she explained, laughing at the expression of my face: “only an ideal. I’ve never met the kind of man I mean.”
“Tell me about him. What does he look like?”
“Oh, he might look very much like you.”
“How dear of you to say that! Well, what is it that he does that I don’t do? Just say the word… non-drinking, vegetarian, pilot, theosophist, superman. I’ll have a try at it, Gladys, if you will tell me what would please you.”
She laughed at the flexibility of my character.
“Well, in the first place, I don’t think my ideal would speak like that,” said she. “He would be a harder man, not so ready to adapt himself to a girl. But, above all, he must be a man who could act, who could look Death in the face and have no fear of him, a man of great experiences. It is not a man that I should love, but the glories he had won because they would be reflected upon me!”