Women, women, women. Who would have imagined in that he-man life he had lived on ranches West that the fair were so large a complement of humanity or that so many of them indeed were fair? Had he lost or gained by not realizing their importance? Suppose his ambition had been to furbelow one such as these, could he have given himself to the lure of making good on his own--faithfully have followed Fate's finger to rainbow's end?
However that might be, now that he was freed from slavery to the jealous jade by the finding of that automatically refilling pot of liquid gold, might he not think of the gentler companionship which he had lacked? The chief thing wrong with to-night, for instance, was the selection by chance of the women in his box. They did not speak his language--never could. Had there been a vacant chair for him to offer some self-selected lady, which one from the dazzling display before him would she be?
Perhaps the most ridiculous rule of civilized society--so he mused--was that limiting self-selectiveness. In the acquirement of everything else in life--stock, land, clothes, food--a person went thoroughly through the supply before choosing. Only in the matter of friends must he depend upon accident or the caprice of other friends. How much more satisfactory and straightforward it would be to search among the faces of strangers for one with personal appeal, then to go to its owner and say: "You look like my idea of a friend. How do I look to you?"
And, if advisable in casual cases, such procedure should help especially in a man's search for his mate. Take himself, now, and the emptiness of his life. His bankers had told him he could afford whatever he wanted. Suppose he wanted a woman, what sort of woman should he want?
Beauty? Must she be beautiful? From the quickening of his pulse as he bent to peer into fair face after fair face with the added interest of this idea, he realized that he enjoyed and feared beauty at least as greatly as the most of men.
Class? In a flashed thought of his mother, a Stansbury of _the_ Stansburys of Virginia, he decided on that. Class she must have.
And kind she must be--tested kind to the core. Tall, healthy, strong, of course. Graceful if possible. Gracious, but not too much so. Frank and at the same time reserved. Educated up to full appreciation of, but not superiority to himself. Half boy and at least one-and-a-half girl.