I can't help it."
"But don't you find it leads to difficulties?" Hewet asked.
"That's men's fault," she answered. "They always drag it in-love, I
mean."
"And so you've gone on having one proposal after another," said Hewet.
"I don't suppose I've had more proposals than most women," said Evelyn,
but she spoke without conviction.
"Five, six, ten?" Hewet ventured.
Evelyn seemed to intimate that perhaps ten was the right figure, but
that it really was not a high one.
"I believe you're thinking me a heartless flirt," she protested. "But
I don't care if you are. I don't care what any one thinks of me. Just
because one's interested and likes to be friends with men, and talk to
them as one talks to women, one's called a flirt."
"But Miss Murgatroyd--"
"I wish you'd call me Evelyn," she interrupted.
"After ten proposals do you honestly think that men are the same as
women?"
"Honestly, honestly,--how I hate that word! It's always used by prigs,"
cried Evelyn. "Honestly I think they ought to be. That's what's so
disappointing. Every time one thinks it's not going to happen, and every
time it does."
"The pursuit of Friendship," said Hewet. "The title of a comedy."
"You're horrid," she cried. "You don't care a bit really. You might be
Mr. Hirst."
"Well," said Hewet, "let's consider. Let us consider--" He paused,
because for the moment he could not remember what it was that they had
to consider.
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