[19]

The bachelor jabbed an oyster viciously.

"Well," he grumbled, "what does make him so fascinating? Is it the squint or the cork——"

The widow looked at him reproachfully.

"Don't be envious," she said. "He might have two squints and yet be successful with women. Haven't you ever seen a runty, plain little man before, with nothing on earth, apparently, to recommend him except his sex, who could draw the women as a magnet does needles?"

The bachelor dropped his oyster and stared at the widow.

"It's hypnotism!" he declared with solemn conviction.

The widow laughed.

"It's nothing of the sort," she contradicted.[20] "It's because he holds man's winning card and knows how to play it. Just observe the tender solicitude with which he consults her about that fish."

[20]

"You mean," inquired the bachelor suspiciously, "that he has a fascinating way?"

"That's all he needs," responded the widow promptly, "to make him irresistible."

"Then, how do you account," argued the bachelor, indicating a Gibsonesque young man eating his dinner alone under a palm at the corner table, "for the popularity of that Greek god over there? He's a perfect boor, yet the women in this hotel pet him and coax him and cuddle him as if he were a prize lion cub."[21]

[21]

"Oh," remarked the widow, "if you were all Greek gods—that would be different. But, unfortunately, the average man is just an ungainly looking thing in a derby hat and hideous clothes, with knuckly hands and padded shoulders and a rough chin."

"Thank you," said the bachelor sweetly. "I see—as in a looking glass. Evidently our countenances—"

"Pooh!" jeered the widow, "your countenances just don't count. That's all. What profiteth it a man though he have the face of an Apollo if he have the legs of a Caliban? A woman never bothers about a man's face. It's his figure that attracts her. She will forgive weak eyes and a cut-off 

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