AN HONEST WOMAN
35
"I don't love you, you know, Boston," he said, warningly. "Yes,
Dick," she replied. "And you must promise that you won't fall in
love with me." "Yes, Dick," she answered, more faintly. "My wife
says I'm a bastard, but she still likes me in the hay. You'll have to
accept that.
If
you want that, you can have it." "I want it, Dick,"
said Dottie, in a feeble but staunch voice. Dick shrugged. "I don't
believe you, Boston." A slightly vaunting smile appeared on his lips.
"Most women don't take me seriously when I state my terms. Then
they get hurt. You were hurt a minute ago-don't tell me why. In
the back of their heads, they have a plan to make me fall in love
with them. I don't fall in love." Dottie's warm eyes were teasing.
"What about Betty?" He threw a glance at the photograph of his
ex-wife. "You saw her?" Dottie nodded. He looked very serious. "I'll
tell you," he said. "I liked Betty physically better than I've ever liked
any woman. I've still got hot pants for her, if you want to call that
love." Dottie shook her head and lowered her eyes. "But I won't
change my life for her, and so Betty lit out. I don't blame her; I'd
have done the same thing, if I were made like Betty. Betty is all
woman. She likes money, change, excitement, things, clothes, posses–
sions." His face grew sober and thoughtful, as though, in speaking
of himself, he were revolving an abstract problem. "I hate posses–
sions. It's a funny thing, because you'd think I hated them because
they meant stability, wouldn't you?" Dottie nodded. "But I
like
sta–
bility; that's just the rub!" He had become quite tense and excited;
his hands flexed nervously as he spoke. To Dottie's eyes, suddenly,
he appeared much younger-a haggard, worried youth, like some of
the more talkative farm boys who sold blueberries on Cape Ann.
"I like a man's life," he said. "A bar. The outdoors. A little
reading. Fishing and hunting. I like men's talk, that's never striving
to get anywhere but just circles and circles. That's why I drink. A
newspaper life is a pretty fair substitute; the Paris
Herald
suited me.
I'm a natural exile. But I hate change, Boston, and I don't change
myself. That's where I come a cropper with women. Women expect
an affair to get better and better, and
if
it doesn't get better, they
think it's getting worse. They think if I sleep with them longer I'm
going to get fonder of them, and if I don't get fonder that I'm tiring
of them. But for me it's all the same.
If
I like it the first time, I
