"
"He's in perfect health," exploded Charlie.
"I know,--but that don't prevent him from coughing and holding
his side and walking with a cane, does it? That's what gets 'em,
Charlie. The quickest way to get a girl interested is to let her
think you're in need of sympathy."
"It don't work when you're as fat as I am," said Charlie gloomily.
Conscious or unconscious of the varying opinions that were being
voiced behind his back, Courtney went confidently ahead with
his wooing. He congratulated himself that he was in Alix's good
graces. If at times she was perplexingly cool,--or "upstage," as
he called it,--he flattered himself that he knew women too well to
be discouraged by these purely feminine manifestations.
This was a game he knew how to play. The time was not yet ripe for
him to abandon his well-calculated air of indifference. That he was
desperately in love with her goes without saying. If at the outset
of his campaign he was inspired by the unworthy motive of greed,
he was now consumed by an entirely different desire,--the desire
to have her for his own, even though she were penniless.
Those whirlwind tactics that had swept many another girl off her
feet were not to be thought of here. Alix was different. She was
not an impressionable, hair-brained flapper, such as he had come in
contact with in past experiences. Despite her sprightly, thoroughly
up-to-the-moment ease of manner, and an air of complete sophistication,
she was singularly old-fashioned in a great many respects.
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