He settled himself in his
chair, in an attitude of easy attention.
"I am always delighted to do you a favor," he said. "It isn't often I
get a chance."
The relations between these two were not easy to understand, unless one
accepted the simplest possible theory of their friendship. It was, on
the part of Mrs. Staggchase, only one of a succession of platonic
intimacies with which her married life had been enriched. She found it
necessary to her enjoyment that some man should be her devoted admirer,
always quite outside the bounds of any possible love-making, albeit
often enough she permitted matters to go to the exciting verge of a
flirtation which might merit a name somewhat warmer than friendship.
She was a brilliant and clever woman who allowed herself the luxury of
gratifying her vanity by encouraging the ardent attentions of some man,
which, if they ever became too pressing, she knew how to check, or, if
necessary, to stop altogether. She was fond of talking, and she frankly
avowed her conviction that women were not worth talking to. She liked
an appreciative masculine listener with whom she could converse, now in
a strain of bewildering frankness, now in a purely impersonal and
intellectual vein, and who, however he might at times delude himself by
misconstruing her confidences into expressions of personal regard, was
clever enough to comprehend the little corrective hints by which, when
necessary, she chose to undeceive him.
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