Shall we ?" * * * * * For twenty-four hours Querida remained a profoundly astonished man.
Examine, in retrospective, as he would, the details of the delicately adjusted machinery which for so many years had slowly but surely turned the interlocking cog-wheels of destiny for him, he could not find where the trouble had been--could discover no friction caused by neglect of lubricants; no over-oiling, either; no flaw.
Wherein lay the trouble?
Based on what error was his theory that the average man could marry anybody he chose?
Just where had he miscalculated?
He admitted that times changed very fast; that the world was spinning at a rate that required nimble wits to keep account of its revolutions.

But his own wits were nimble, almost feminine in the rapid delicacy of their intuition--_almost_ feminine, but not quite.

And he felt, vaguely, that there lay his mistake in engaging a woman with a woman's own weapons; and that the only chance a man has is to perplex her with his own.
The world was spinning rapidly; times changed very fast, but not as fast as women were changing in the Western World.

For the self-sufficient woman--the self-confident, self-sustaining individual, not only content but actually preferring autonomy of mind and body, was a fact in which Jose Querida had never really ever believed.

No sentimentalist does or really can.