he getting of a
husband without regard to any body's feelings--save Rube. His are not
to be hurt until you can hurt them with impunity! You are bound to
hold on to _him_ until you secure _me_, beyond a peradventure! That is
your little game, Mell, is it? Out upon you! Oh, unfortunate man that
I am, to have fallen into the hands of a woman who is particular as to
the fit of her ball dress, but has no preference when it comes to a
husband; who has the aspect of a goddess, but the easy principles of a
Delilah; who is, in fact, not a genuine woman at all, with a heart and
a soul in her, but a man-eating monster, seeking prey--a shark in
woman's clothing, ready to take into the matrimonial clutch, and
swallow at a single gulp, me, if you can get me; if not me, Rube; if
not Rube, any other eligible creature in man's guise, whether
descended from a molecule in the coral, or a tadpole in the spawn:
whether a swine of Epicurus, or an ape just from Barbary! Shame upon
you, woman! Shame! Shame!"

Restive under these severe strictures, Mell had made several
ineffectual attempts to put a stop to them, but her appealing gestures
implored in vain. Finding he would not desist, she bit her lips in
great agitation, and crimsoned violently.

"You are the most impertinent man in existence!" she informed him
petulantly, when he had done.

"That's right, Mell," he answered. "Turn red--turn red to the tips of
your eyelashes! It is the most hopeful sign I have yet seen.
Mellville, look at me."

She raised to him wonderingly her wondrously beautiful eyes.

"I have been asking myself how I could love you so well, a woman who
could condescend to sail under false colors; who knows how to stoop
from her high estate, and trick, and juggle, and blind; who has set a
trap to catch a mouse, and victimizes her prey; who has spread her
toils to obtain a husband under false pretences. I have asked myself
many times, 'how can you love that woman?' I have wished that I loved
you less--that I loved you not at all! And I would crush it out--this
unspeakable tenderness, which shields and defends your image in my
heart--crush it out, beat it down, tear it into tatters, grind it into
dust under the heel of an inexorable resolve, but that I believe, but
that I _know_, Mell, that there is something within you deeper,
better, worthier! 'Truth is God,' and the woman who is true in all
things is a part of Divinity. But what of the woman who is false where
she o