"I shall love Monica again, another time. Now I love you. I don't change. But sometimes it's one, then the other. Why not?"
"It can't be! It can't be!" cried Mary.
"Why not? Come into the stable with me, with me and the horses."
"Oh don't torture me! I hate my animal nature. You want to make a slave of me," she cried blindly.
This struck him silent. Hate her animal nature? What did she mean? Did she mean the passion she had for him? And make a slave of her? How?
"How make a slave of you?" he asked. "What are you now? You are a sad thing as you are. I don't want to leave you as you are. You are a slave now, to Aunt Matilda and all the conventions. Come with me into the stable."
"Oh, you are cruel to me! You are wicked! I can't. You know I can't."
"Why can't you? You can. I am not wicked. To me it doesn't matter what the world is. You really want me, and nothing but me. It's only the outside of you that's afraid. There is nothing to be afraid of, now we have enough money. You will come with me to the North-West, and be my other wife, and have my children, and I shall depend on you as a man has to depend on a woman."
"How selfish you are! You are as selfish as my father, who betrayed your mother's sister and left this skull-and-cross-bones son," she cried. "No, it's dreadful, it's horrible. In this horrible place, too, proposing such a thing to me. It shows you have no feelings."
"I don't care about feelings. They're what people have because they feel they ought to have them. But I know my own real feelings. I don't care about your feelings."