Oh stay and hear! your true love's coming!'

She sang the two lines in a deliciously entrancing voice, full of youth
and tenderness. With one quick stride he advanced upon her and caught
her by the shoulders.

"My God, I could shake the life out of you!" he said, fiercely--"I
wonder you are not afraid of me!"

She laughed, careless of his grasp.

"Why should I be? You couldn't kill me if you tried--and if you could--"

"If I could--ah, if I could!" he muttered, fiercely.

"Why then there would be another murderer added to the general world of
murderers!" she said--"That's all! It's not worth it!"

Still he held her in his grip.

"See here!" he said--"Before you go I want yon to know a thing or
two,--you may as well learn once for all my views on women. They're
brief, but they're fixed. And they're straight! Women are nothing--just
necessary for the continuation of the race--no more. They may be
beautiful or homely--it's all one--they serve the same purpose. I'm
under no delusions about them. Without men they are utterly
useless,--mere waste on the wind! To idealise them is a stupid mistake.
To think that they can do anything original, intellectual or
imaginative is to set one's self down an idiot. YOU,--you the spoilt
only child of one of the biggest rascal financiers in New York,--YOU,
left alone in the world with a fortune so vast as to be almost
criminal--you think you are something superlative in the way of
women,--you play the Cleopatra,--you are convinced you can draw men
after you--but it's your money that draws them,--not YOU! Can't you see
that?--or are you too vain to see it? And you've no mercy on them,--you
make them believe you care for them and then you throw them over like
empty nutshells! That's your way! But you never fooled ME,--and you
never will!"

He released her as suddenly as he had grasped her,--she drew her white
draperies round her shoulders with a statuesque grace, and lifted her
head, smiling.

"Empty nutshells are a very good description of men who come after a
woman for her money"--she observed, placidly--"and it's quite natural
that the woman should throw them over her shoulder. There's nothing in
them--not even a flavour! No--never fooled you,--you fooled
yourself--you are fooling yourself now, only you don't know it. But
there!--let's finish talking! I like the romance of the situation--you
in your shirt-sleeves on a hill in California, and I in silken stuff
and diamonds pay