you sure that you aren't debasing it? You won't marry a man who has
always loved you. _Art._ You put marble and bronze higher than little
children. _Art._ You allow disreputable, unwashed men to talk in your
presence as that man talked. _Art._ You hire people of bad character to
sit for you, and people of no character. All art. You treat them in a
spirit of friendliness and camaraderie. You affect to place art above
all considerations; above character, above morals; worse, you place it
above cleanliness.

"A man--yes, take him for all and all, a man--eats out his heart for
you; desires only to live for you, only to die for you, only to lie at
your feet afterward--that is nothing to you. You do not even care to
listen. You would rather hear through a braggart, indecent mouth that
ought to be sewed up what Rodin said about Phidias. It seems finer to
you to be an artist than a woman, and you so beautiful and so dear!"

Barbara made no answer. She looked a little hurt, possibly a little
sullen. She had a way of looking a little sullen (it did not happen
often) when she could not hit upon just the words she wanted to express
her thoughts. She felt that her attitude toward life was almost entirely
right, almost entirely justifiable, and she wanted to explain exactly
why this was thus, and couldn't. So after a silence she said:

"Oh, I'm just a little pig. Why bother about me? And besides, it's no
use."

"Don't say that, Barbara. There _must_ be use in it. Don't you know in
your heart that some day you are going to marry me?"

"No," she said. "Sometimes I've thought so, but I don't know it." She
selected an arrow from her quiver, touched the point with venom, and
because she had not enjoyed being scolded shot it into him. "And at the
moment I don't think so."

Wilmot spoke on patiently. "Every true lover, Barbs," he said, "comes in
time to the end of his patience and the end of his endurance."

"And then he ceases from loving--and troubling."

"He does not. When he knows as I know what is best for her happiness and
for his, and when he finds that humbleness, and begging, and gentleness,
and persuasion are of no avail--why, then if he's a man he _makes_ her
love him, _makes_ her marry him."

"I hope, my dear Wilmot," she said, "that you are speaking from a very
limited experience."

"From the experience of ten million years. I have only one life to live.
Somehow I will make you love me, make you belong to me. Just b