et
us be friends."

Duncan took her hand and pressed it to his lips. He looked up into her
tantalizing eyes and felt again the warm impulse of the old love burning
in his heart. "I cannot be your friend, Helen," he said passionately,
"for I love you."

She drew her hand away quickly and patted his cheek disapprovingly, as
she might have patted a child's; then with a little, playful laugh, she
said: "don't be silly, you know I don't like it."

Man of the world as he was, without scruples and usually reckless, he
felt cowed. For a moment he sat moving his hands nervously; then he
looked up and asked in a serious tone: "Why didn't you marry me?"

"Because I liked you too well."

"That is no answer."

"Because I wanted to keep your love."

"That is not true."

"Well, because marriage is a business partnership, which, to be
successful, requires a person of experience and a person of money. You
had too much experience and I had no money, _le voila_."

"You are a heartless flirt," Duncan said, slowly and earnestly.

"That's what a man always says of a woman when he fails to make her love
him."

"You are a heartless flirt, I repeat," he answered. "You stole the best
love in my heart; you crushed it and threw it aside like a flower which
no longer pleased you."

"Nonsense, Duncan, such poetic similes are ridiculous. Better say that
love, to a man, is an apple of Sodom, fair to behold; but when he has it
in his grasp it crumbles to sickening ashes."

"You stole my love, Helen; a man never loves but once."

"And in revenge, to use your metaphor, you have plucked and trampled
under foot every flower within your reach. I know you, Duncan. It is
only because I was stronger than the rest that I still bloom fair in
your eyes."

Duncan looked full into Helen's face with an injured expression in his
eyes. "Helen," he said finally, "'tis women like you who make us men
distrust your sex; who make us what we are."

Helen returned his glance, and replied scornfully: "No; it is men like
you who drag us down. We women must go through life armed, like
travelers of old, against the attacks of you highwaymen. If we are weak,
we are robbed of our best possessions, and left helpless by the way; if
we are strong and ward off your attacks, you take your revenge on those
who fall into your unscrupulous hands. But that is moralizing, and I am
no moralist; I take the world as it is."

"Then why not take the pleasure in it?" said D