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marry such a woman; but then, I am not an ordinary man.’ He was afraid of me—a little man, and afraid of me. He would say, ‘With your permission, my dear, I shall exercise the prerogative of a husband.” Ah, the contempt I have for him!

“I wanted force—blind, unreasoning force—and love not for my soul or for some imagined beauty of my mind, but for the white fetish of my body. I do not want softness. I am soft. My husband uses scented lotions on his hands before he touches me, and his fingers are like thick, damp snails. I want the crush of hard muscles, the delicious pain of little hurts.”

She searched his face closely, as though looking once more for a quality which had been lost.

“I thought richly of you once; you grew to be a brazen figure of the night. And now—I find you a babbler, a speaker of sweet, considered words, and rather clumsy about it. I find you are no realist at all, but only a bungling romancer. You want to marry me—to protect me. All men, save one, have wanted to protect me. In every way I am more able to protect myself than you are. From the morning of my first memory I have been made sick with phrases. I have been dressed in epithets and fed endearments. These other men, like you, would not say what they wanted. They, like you, felt it necessary to justify their passion in their own eyes. They, like you, must convince themselves, as well as me, that they loved me.”

Henry Morgan had sunk his head, seemingly in shame. Now he started toward her.