all of them have said something about love."

"And I love you," he told her. "A man cannot come to care for a woman
without her knowing it. I don't come to you bleating about a breaking
heart, because you are no fool and I am no fool. If you were the kind
to care about a lot of sentimental rot you wouldn't be the woman you
are, you wouldn't be the woman I'd want. I'd be good to you. I'd give
you the power that a beautiful woman with a strong, rich husband can
come to have in San Francisco, in New York, in London if you like.
When I rise you'll rise with me. I'll have men know that my wife shall
have the place, above the heads of their wives, that she wants. And
I'll be proud of you!"

Then he got his answer as seldom a woman has answered a man. She
lifted her eyes to his, she put back her head with the tossing regal
gesture he knew so well, her lips parted slowly--and she laughed.
Laughed at him in a sudden mirth of leaping scorn, that was hard and
cruel, that mocked and sneered at him, that took supreme toll of the
supreme moment. Laughed as she saw the light quiver and die in his
eyes, as the colour faded from his cheeks and ran back red.

"Love me!" she cried scornfully. "You'd be proud of me! Why? When
you answered you forgot to tell the truth, Mr. Hume. Because you need
me, because you are beaten now and must come hiding a whimper under big
words, come to a woman who holds you so in the hollow of her hand that
she can break you so utterly that your own overweening conceit cannot
find the fragments with the microscope of a distorted vanity! Love me
as you'd love any other fine thing just because it was yours. Because
you'd use me, because you see that such a wife as I could be would be
but a stone for you to stand on to climb up a little higher. And you
think that of all men in the world I should choose a man like _you_ for
husband?"

She jeered openly at him, disdaining to see the red anger flaring in
his eyes. She remembered the reason that had brought her to him in the
beginning and a savage gladness in her rejoiced at finding the victory
all that she had yearned for. Her dominant blood was seething to the
surface. And it was Hume blood.

"Listen to me a minute," she cried sharply as he was about to speak.
"You've come for straight talk to-day, you say. Let us have it then.
You have gone your way boastfully, arrogantly, unscrupulously and it
has been the fool's way. You are playing the l