It was hard to believe that beautiful, sumptuous Nina Childe, with her
wit, her humour, her imagination, loved this neutral little fellow;
yet she made no secret of doing so. We tried to frame a theory that
would account for it. 'It's the maternal instinct,' suggested one.
'It's her chivalry,' said another; 'she's the sort of woman who could
never be very violently interested by a man of her own size. She would
need one she could look up to, or else one she could protect and pat
on the head.' '"God be thanked, the meanest of His creatures boasts
two soul-sides, one to face the world with, one to show a woman when
he loves her,"' quoted a third. 'Perhaps Coco'--we had nicknamed him
Coco--'has luminous qualities that we don't dream of, to which he
gives the rein when they're _a deux_.'
Anyhow, if we were mortified that she should have preferred such a one
to us, we were relieved to think that she hadn't fallen into the
clutches of a blackguard, as we had feared she would. That Coco was a
blackguard we never guessed. We made the best of him, because we had
to choose between doing that and seeing less of Nina: in time, I am
afraid--such is the influence of habit--we rather got to like him, as
one gets to like any innocuous, customary thing. And if we did not
like the situation--for none of us, whatever might have been our
practice, shared Nina's hereditary theories anent the sexual
conventions--we recognised that we couldn't alter it, and we shrugged
our shoulders resignedly, trusting it might be no worse.
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