She had evoked his
admiration in New York, excited more than a passing interest, but
he felt that he did not know her very well. In the unconventional
life now in prospect he could see her daily and permit his
interest to be dissipated or deepened, as the case might be, while
he remained, in the strictest sense of the world, uncommitted. It
was a very prudent scheme and not a bad one. He reasoned justly:
"This selecting a wife is no bagatelle. A man wishes to know
something more about a woman than he can learn in a drawing-room
or at a theatre party."
But now he was in trouble. He had been unable to maintain this
judicial aspect. He had been made to understand at the outset that
Miss Madison did not regard herself as a proper subject for
deliberate investigation, and that she was not inclined to aid in
his researches. So far from meeting him with engaging frankness
and revealing her innermost soul for his inspection, he found her
as elusive as only a woman of tact can be when so minded, even at
a place where people meet daily.
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