In the mean time, everything went on quietly enough after Cousin
Richard's return. A man of sense,--that is, a man who knows perfectly
well that a cool head is worth a dozen warm hearts in carrying the
fortress of a woman's affections, (not yours, "Astarte," nor yours,
"Viola,")--who knows that men are rejected by women every day because
they, the men, love them, and are accepted every day because they do
not, and therefore can study the arts of pleasing,--a man of sense,
when he finds he has established his second parallel too soon,
retires quietly to his first, and begins working on his covered ways
again. [The whole art of love may be read in any Encyclopaedia under
the title _Fortification_, where the terms just used are explained.]
After the little adventure of the necklace, Dick retreated at once to
his first parallel. Elsie loved riding,--and would go off with him on
a gallop now and then. He was a master of all those strange Indian
horseback-feats which shame the tricks of the circus-riders, and used
to astonish and almost amuse her sometimes by disappearing from his
saddle, like a phantom horseman, lying flat against the side of the
bounding creature that bore him, as if he were a hunting leopard with
his claws in the horse's flank and flattening himself out against his
heaving ribs.
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