"Try another seer--there is De Castro. Here is Mrs. MacBirney. Mrs. MacBirney," Kimberly moved so he could command Alice’s attention, "Mrs. Nelson is trying to find out what a man likes in a woman. I haven’t been able to tell her----"
"It isn’t that at all," smiled Lottie, wearily. "Mr. Kimberly can tell. He won’t."
Kimberly appealed to Alice. "It is a great mistake not to trust your oracle when he is doing his best--don’t you think so, Mrs. MacBirney?"
"I suppose an oracle is consulted on his reputation--and it is on his reputation that his clients should rely," suggested Alice.
"Anyway," declared Lottie, rising, "I am going to try another."
Kimberly turned his chair as she walked away so that he could speak to Alice. "Giving advice is not my forte. Whenever I attempt it I disappoint somebody; and this time I had a difficult subject. Mrs. Nelson wants to know what men like in women. A much more interesting subject would be, what women like in men. I should suppose, in my blundering way, that sincerity would come before everything else, Mrs. MacBirney. What do you think?"
"But there is a great deal else, you imply."
"Unselfishness among other things," said Alice.
He objected frankly to her suggestion. "I don’t know about unselfishness. I have my doubts about unselfishness. Are you sure?"
"I don’t know that I have any ideals--abstract ideals, that is. Though I once took quite an interest in the Catholic Church."
"No, no; a real and concrete interest. I admire it greatly. I tried once to look into its claims. What in part discouraged me was the unpleasant things Catholics themselves told me about their church."
"I don’t know enough about them to discriminate between the good and the bad. What, by the way," he asked bluntly, "are you--a good Catholic or a bad one?"
She was taken for an instant aback; then she regarded him with an expression he did not often see in her eyes. "I am a bad one, I am ashamed to say."
"Then these I speak of must have been good ones," he remarked at once, "because they were not in the least like you."
If he thought he had perplexed her he was soon undeceived. "There are varying degrees even of badness," she returned steadily. "I hope I shall never fall low enough to speak slightingly of my faith."