ickened her. She played on his higher
nature. She understood spontaneously what would be most strange and
taking to him in a woman. Various as the Serpent of old Nile, she acted
fallen beauty, humorous indifference, reckless daring, arrogance in ruin.
And acting thus, what think you?--She did it so well because she was
growing half in earnest.

"Richard! I am not what I was since I knew you. You will not give me up
quite?"

"Never, Bella."

"I am not so bad as I'm painted!"

"You are only unfortunate."

"Now that I know you I think so, and yet I am happier."

She told him her history when this soft horizon of repentance seemed to
throw heaven's twilight across it. A woman's history, you know: certain
chapters expunged. It was dark enough to Richard.

"Did you love the man?" he asked. "You say you love no one now."

"Did I love him? He was a nobleman and I a tradesman's daughter. No. I
did not love him. I have lived to learn it. And now I should hate him, if
I did not despise him."

"Can you be deceived in love?" said Richard, more to himself than to her.

"Yes. When we're young we can be very easily deceived. If there is such a
thing as love, we discover it after we have tossed about and roughed it.
Then we find the man, or the woman, that suits us:--and then it's too
late! we can't have him."

"Singular!" murmured Richard, "she says just what my father said."

He spoke aloud: "I could forgive you if you had loved him."

"Don't be harsh, grave judge! How is a girl to distinguish?"

"You had some affection for him? He was the first?"

She chose to admit that. "Yes. And the first who talks of love to a girl
must be a fool if he doesn't blind her."

"That makes what is called first love nonsense."

"Isn't it?"

He repelled the insinuation. "Because I know it is not, Bella."

Nevertheless she had opened a wider view of the world to him, and a
colder. He thought poorly of girls. A woman a sensible, brave, beautiful
woman seemed, on comparison, infinitely nobler than those weak creatures.

She was best in her character of lovely rebel accusing foul injustice.
"What am I to do? You tell me to be different. How can I? What am I to
do? Will virtuous people let me earn my bread? I could not get a
housemaid's place! They wouldn't have me--I see their noses smelling! Yes
I can go to the hospital and sing behind a screen! Do you expect me to
bury myself alive? Why, man, I have blood: I can't become a stone. Y