Her head drooped, she avoided his steady, searching gaze.
"What wages, Manella? None, you would say, except--love! You tell me you would be my woman,--and I know you mean it. You would be my slave--you mean that, too. But you would want me to love you! Manella, there is no such thing as love!--not in this world! There is animal attraction,--the magnetism of the male for the female, the female for the male,--the magnetism that pulls the opposite sexes together in order to keep this planet supplied with an ever new crop of fools,--but love! No, Manella! There is no such thing!"
Here he gently took her two hands away from their tightly folded position on her bosom and held them in his own.
"No such thing, my dear!" he went on, speaking softly and soothingly, as though to a child--"Except in the dreams of poets, and you--fortunately!--know nothing about poetry! The wild animal in you is attracted to the tame, ruminating animal in me,--and you would be my woman, though I would not be your man. I quite believe that it is the natural instinct of the female to select her mate,--but, though the rule may hold good in the forest world, it doesn't always work among the human herd. Man considers that he has the right of selection--quite a mistake of his I'm sure, for he has no real sense of beauty or fitness, and generally selects most vilely. All the same he is an obstinate brute, and sticks to his brutish ideas as a snail sticks to its shell. I am an obstinate brute!--I am absolutely convinced that I have the right to choose my own woman, if I want one--which I don't,--or if ever I do want one--which I never shall!"
She drew her hands quickly from his grasp. There were tears in her splendid dark eyes.
"You talk, you talk!" she said, with a kind of sob in her voice--"It is all talk with you--talk which I cannot understand! I don't WANT to understand!--I am only a poor, ignorant girl. I cannot talk--but I can love! Ah yes, I can love! You say there is no such thing as love! What is it then, when one prays every night and morning for a man?--when one would work one's fingers to the bone for him?--when one would die to keep him from sickness and harm? What do you call it?"
He smiled.
"Self-delusion, Manella! The beautiful self-delusion of every nature-bred woman when her fancy is attracted by a particular sort of man. She makes an ideal of him in her mind and imagines him to be a god, when he is nothing but a devil!"