re and graceful appearance, and may perhaps wish to avoid the
disfigurements of maternity. Is not this one of your strongest reasons
for refusing a too importunate love? Some natural defect perhaps makes
you insusceptible in spite of yourself? Do not be angry; my study, my
inquiry is absolutely dispassionate. Some are born blind, and nature may
easily have formed women who in like manner are blind, deaf, and dumb to
love. You are really an interesting subject for medical investigation.
You do not know your value. You feel perhaps a very legitimate distaste
for mankind; in that I quite concur--to me they all seem ugly and
detestable. And you are right,' I added, feeling my heart swell within
me; 'how can you do otherwise than despise us? There is not a man living
who is worthy of you.'

"I will not repeat all the biting words with which I ridiculed her. In
vain; my bitterest sarcasms and keenest irony never made her wince nor
elicited a sign of vexation. She heard me, with the customary smile
upon her lips and in her eyes, the smile that she wore as a part of her
clothing, and that never varied for friends, for mere acquaintances, or
for strangers.

"'Isn't it very nice of me to allow you to dissect me like this?' she
said at last, as I came to a temporary standstill, and looked at her
in silence. 'You see,' she went on, laughing, 'that I have no foolish
over-sensitiveness about my friendship. Many a woman would shut her door
on you by way of punishing you for your impertinence.'

"'You could banish me without needing to give me the reasons for your
harshness.' As I spoke I felt that I could kill her if she dismissed me.

"'You are mad,' she said, smiling still.

"'Did you never think,' I went on, 'of the effects of passionate love? A
desperate man has often murdered his mistress.'

"'It is better to die than to live in misery,' she said coolly. 'Such
a man as that would run through his wife's money, desert her, and leave
her at last in utter wretchedness.'

"This calm calculation dumfounded me. The gulf between us was made
plain; we could never understand each other.

"'Good-bye,' I said proudly.

"'Good-bye, till to-morrow,' she answered, with a little friendly bow.

"For a moment's space I hurled at her in a glance all the love I must
forego; she stood there with than banal smile of hers, the detestable
chill smile of a marble statue, with none of the warmth in it that it
seemed to express. Can you form any