on: "But we all talk to some one, and now
I'm going to talk to you--talk for once, Doctor, right out of my
soul--if I have one."

He rose nervously, obeying some purely physical impulse, and then sat
down again, with his hands in his thick, black hair, and his elbows on
his bony knees.

"All right, Tom," piped the Doctor, "go ahead."

"Well, then," he began as he looked at the floor before him, "do you
suppose I don't know that you know what I'm up to? Do you think I don't
know even what the town is buzzing about? Lord, man, I can feel it like
a scorching fire. Why," he exclaimed with emotion, "feeling the hearts
of men is my job. I've been at it for fifteen years--"

He broke off and looked up. "How could I get up before a jury and feel
them out man by man as I talked if I wasn't sensitive to these things?
You've seen me make them cry when I was in the practice. How could I
make them cry if I didn't feel like crying myself. You're a doctor--you
know that. People forget what I am--what a thousand stringed instrument
I am. Now, Doctor Jim, let me tell you something. This is the bottom
hard pan of the truth: I never before really cared for these
women--these other women--when I got them. But I do care for the chase,
I do care for the risk of it--for the exhilaration of it--for the joy of
it!"

The Doctor's mouth twitched and he took a breath as if about to speak.
Van Dorn stopped him: "Don't cut in, Doc Jim--let me say it all out. I'm
young. I love the moonlight and the stars and I never go through a wood
that I do not see trysting places there--and I never see a great stretch
of prairie under the sunshine that I do not put in a beautiful woman and
go following her--not for her--Doctor Jim, but for the joy of pursuit,
for the thrill of uncovering a bared, naked soul, and the overwhelming
danger of it. God--man, I've stood afraid to breathe, flattened against
a wall and heard the man-beast growl and sniff, hunting me. I love to
love and be loved; but not less do I love to hunt and be hunted. I've
hidden under trees, I've skulked in the shadows, I've walked boldly in
the sunlight with my life in my hand to meet a woman's eyes, to feel her
guilty shudder in my arms. Oh, Doctor Jim, you don't understand the riot
in my blood that the moon makes shining through the trees upon the
water, with great, shadowy glades, and the tinkle of cow bells far away,
and a woman afraid of me--and I afraid of her--and nothing but the stars