'It is only hard to answer, because you are conscious of a convention

called honour which man expects you to set above everything. Very good.

A couple of thousand years hence there will be some other convention in

its place called by another name; but love will be precisely the same

passion that it is now, because it's purely human and not subject to

any conventions when it is real--any more than you can make the

circulation of your blood conventional or the beating of your heart, or

hunger, or thirst, or sleepiness, instead of being natural as they all

are.' 'You're a materialist,' said Margaret, finding nothing else to say.

'I don't think so, but whatever I am, I'm in earnest, and I don't

pretend to be anything but human.' He stopped and looked straight into Margaret's eyes; and somehow she

did not turn away, for there was nothing in his that she was afraid to

meet. Just then she would rather have tried to stare him out of

countenance than look for one minute at the woman's face in the

picture, which he said was so like her. She did not remember that in

all her life anything had so strangely disturbed her as that likeness.

She had seen pictures and statues by the score in exhibitions and

public places, which should have offended her maiden modesty far more.

What was there in that one painting that could offend at all? A woman's

head thrown back, a woman's hand pressing her hair to her breast--it

ended there, and that was all; and what was that, compared with the

acres of raw nudity that crowd the walls of the Salon every year.

Logotheti said that he was 'human,' and she felt it was true, in the

sense that he was a 'primitive,' or an 'elementary being,' as some

people would say. The fact that he had all the profound astuteness of

the true Oriental did not conflict with this in the least. The

astuteness of the Asiatic, and of the Greek of Asia, is an instinct

like that of the wild animal; talent alone is 'human' in any true

sense, but instinct is animal, even in men, whether it shows itself in

matters of money-getting or matters of taste.

Yet somehow Margaret was beginning to be attracted by the man. He had

never shown the least lack of respect, or of what Mrs. Rushmore would

have called 'refinement,' and he had done nothing which even distantly

resembled taking a liberty. He spoke quietly, and even gently, and his

eyes did not gloat upon her face and figure as some men's eyes did.

Even as to the picture, he had not led her to see it, for she had gone

up to it herself, drawn to it against her will, and he had only told

the truth in saying that it was like her. Yet he was very much in love

with her, she was sure, and most of the men she had met would not have

behaved as well as he did, under the rather unusual circumstances. For

little Madame De Rosa had been sleeping so soundly that she might as

well not have been in the room at all. Behind all he did and said, she

felt his almost primitive sincerity, and the elementary strength of the

passion she had inspired. No woman can feel that and not be flattered,

and few, being flattered by a man's love, can resist the temptation to

play with it.




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