ght to attain that object. He means to succeed and he
will. You're purely incidental; but he has that perverted, middle-class
family pride that will make him prevent you from getting out and trying
your own wings. Nature never intended a woman like you to be a celibate,
any more than I was so intended. And sooner or late you'll marry
somebody--if only to hop out of the fire into the frying pan."

"I hate you," she flashed passionately, "when you talk like that."

"No, you don't," he returned quietly. "You hate what I say, because
it's the truth--and it's humiliating to be helpless. You think I don't
_sabe?_ But I'm putting a weapon into your hand. Let's put it
differently; leave out the sentiment for a minute. We'll say that I want
a housekeeper, preferably an ornamental one, because I like beautiful
things. You want to get away from this drudgery. That's what it is,
simple drudgery. You crave lots of things you can't get by yourself, but
that you could help me get for you. There's things lacking in your life,
and so is there in mine. Why shouldn't we go partners? You think about
it."

"I don't need to," she answered coolly. "It wouldn't work. You don't
appear to have any idea what it means for a woman to give herself up
body and soul to a man she doesn't care for. For me it would be plain
selling myself. I haven't the least affection for you personally. I
might even detest you."

"You wouldn't," he said positively.

"What makes you so sure of that?" she demanded.

"It would sound conceited if I told you why," he drawled. "Listen. We're
not gods and goddesses, we human beings. We're not, after all, in our
real impulses, so much different from the age when a man took his club
and went after a female that looked good to him. They mated, and raised
their young, and very likely faced on an average fewer problems than
arise in modern marriages supposedly ordained in Heaven. You'd have the
one big problem solved,--the lack of means to live decently,--which
wrecks more homes than anything else, far more than lack of love.
Affection doesn't seem to thrive on poverty. What is love?"

His voice took on a challenging note.

Stella shook her head. He puzzled her, wholly serious one minute, a
whimsical smile twisting up the corners of his mouth the next. And he
surprised her too by his sureness of utterance on subjects she had not
supposed would enter such a man's mind.

"I don't know," she answered absently, turning over