'With being poor, for instance?'

"'Of course; that will sting you. You are sore about your poverty; you
brood over that.'

"'With having nothing but a very plain person to offer the woman who may
master my heart?'

"'Exactly. You have a habit of calling yourself plain. You are sensitive
about the cut of your features because they are not quite on an Apollo
pattern. You abase them more than is needful, in the faint hope that
others may say a word in their behalf--which won't happen. Your face is
nothing to boast of, certainly--not a pretty line nor a pretty tint to
be found therein.'

"'Compare it with your own.'

"'It looks like a god of Egypt--a great sand-buried stone head; or
rather I will compare it to nothing so lofty. It looks like Tartar. You
are my mastiff's cousin. I think you as much like him as a man can be
like a dog.'

"'Tartar is your dear companion. In summer, when you rise early, and
run out into the fields to wet your feet with the dew, and freshen your
cheek and uncurl your hair with the breeze, you always call him to
follow you. You call him sometimes with a whistle that you learned from
me. In the solitude of your wood, when you think nobody but Tartar is
listening, you whistle the very tunes you imitated from my lips, or sing
the very songs you have caught up by ear from my voice. I do not ask
whence flows the feeling which you pour into these songs, for I know it
flows out of your heart, Miss Keeldar. In the winter evenings Tartar
lies at your feet. You suffer him to rest his head on your perfumed lap;
you let him couch on the borders of your satin raiment. His rough hide
is familiar with the contact of your hand. I once saw you kiss him on
that snow-white beauty spot which stars his broad forehead. It is
dangerous to say I am like Tartar; it suggests to me a claim to be
treated like Tartar.'

"'Perhaps, sir, you can extort as much from your penniless and
friendless young orphan girl, when you find her.'

"'Oh could I find her such as I image her! Something to tame first, and
teach afterwards; to break in, and then to fondle. To lift the destitute
proud thing out of poverty; to establish power over and then to be
indulgent to the capricious moods that never were influenced and never
indulged before; to see her alternately irritated and subdued about
twelve times in the twenty-four hours; and perhaps, eventually, when her
training was accomplished, to behold her the exemplary and patient