CHAPTER XVII.
"EH, BUT SHE'S WINSOME." "Eh, but she's winsome!" Grant Harlson entered my room one evening with this irrelevant exclamation.
I have remained unmarried, and have learned how to live, as a man may, after a fashion, who has no aid from that sex which alone knows how to make a home.
Harlson, at this time, had apartments very near me, and we invaded each other's rooms at will, and were a mutual comfort to each other, and a help--at least I know that he was all this to me.

I have never yet seen a man so strong and self-reliant or secretive--save some few who were misers or recluses, and not of the real world--who, if there were no woman for him, would not tell things to some one man.

We two knew each other, and counted on each other, and while I could not do as much for him as he for me, I could try as hard.

He knew that.
"Eh, but she's winsome!" He went to the mantel, took a cigar, and lit it, and turned to me indignantly: "You smoke-producing dolt, why are you silent?
Didn't you hear my earnest comment?
Where is the trace of good behavior you once owned ?" "Who's winsome ?" "She, I tell you! She--the girl I met to-night.

And you sit there and inhale the fumes of a weed, and are no more stirred by my announcement than the belching chimney of an exposition by the fair display around it!" "You big, driveling idiot, how can I know what you are talking about?
You come in with an obscure outburst of enthusiasm over something,--a woman, I infer,--and because the particular tone, and direction, and mood of your insanity is not recognized within a moment, you descend to personalities.