hat
you have said, I forget it, I have not heard it. Your sort could have no
heart beat for one like me. 'Tis men like myself are slaves to women
such as you. You could never have cared for me, and never did. What you
loved, Madam, was only what you had _lost_, was only what you saw in
this country--was only what this country means! Your past life, of
course, I do not know."

"Sometime," she murmured, "I will tell you."

"Whatever it was, Madam, you have been a brilliant woman, a power in
affairs. Yes, and an enigma, and to none more than to yourself. You show
that now. You only loved what Elisabeth loved. As woman, then, you were
born for the first time, touched by that throb of her heart, not your
own. `Twas mere accident I was there to feel that throb, as sweet as it
was innocent. You were not woman yet, you were but a child. You had not
then chosen. You have yet to choose. It was Love that you loved!
Perhaps, after all, it was America you loved. You began to see, as you
say, a wider and a sweeter world than you had known."

She nodded now, endeavoring to smile.

"_Gentilhomme!_" I heard her murmur.

"So then I go on, Madam, and say we are the same. I am the agent of one
idea, you of another. I ask you once more to choose. I know how you will
choose."

She went on, musing to herself. "Yes, there is a gulf between male and
female, after all. As though what he said could be true! Listen!" She
spoke up more sharply. "If results came as you liked, what difference
would the motives make?"

"How do you mean?"

"Only this, Monsieur, that I am not so lofty as you think. I might do
something. If so, 'twould need to be through some motive wholly
sufficient to _myself_."

"Search, then, your own conscience."

"I have one, after all! It might say something to me, yes."

"Once you said to me that the noblest thing in life was to pass on the
torch of a great principle."

"I lied! I lied!" she cried, beating her hands together. "I am a woman!
Look at me!"

She threw back her shoulders, standing straight and fearless. God wot,
she was a woman. Curves and flame! Yes, she was a woman. White flesh and
slumbering hair! Yes, she was a woman. Round flesh and the red-flecked
purple scent arising! Yes, she was a woman. Torture of joy to hold in a
man's arms! Yes, she was a woman!

"How, then, could I believe"--she laid a hand upon her bosom--"how,
then, could I believe that principle was more than life? It is for you,
a