She nodded hesitatingly. Then, encouraged by his cynical, good-humored laugh, "Though feminine doesn't quite express it. There isn't enough of the primitive man left in you for a woman of my temperament. You have been superrefined, Boris. You are too understanding, too sympathetic for a feminine woman like me. There are two persons to you—one that feels, one that reasons—criticises—analyzes—laughs. I couldn't for a moment forget the one that laughs—at yourself, at any who respond to the you that feels. I suppose you don't understand. I'm sure I don't."
"'You are my life, the light on my path.'"
"Vaguely," said he, somewhat absently. "Who'd suspect it?"
"Suspect what?"
"That there was this—this coarse streak in you—this craving for the ultramasculine, the rude, rough, aggressive male, inconsiderate, brutal, masterful?"
"A coarse streak," she repeated, half in assent, half in mere reflection.
He surveyed impersonally her delicately feminine charms, suggesting fragility even. "And yet," he mused aloud, "I should have seen it. What else could be the meaning of those sharp, even teeth—of the long slits through which your green-gray-brown-blue eyes look. And your long, slim, sensitive lines——"
The impersonal faded into the personal, the Boris that analyzed into the Boris that felt. The appeal of her beauty to his senses swept over and submerged his pose of philosopher. His eyes shone and swam, like lights seen afar through a mist; the fingers that held the cigarette trembled. But, as he realized long afterwards, he showed then and there how right she was as to his masculinity. For, his was the passive intensity of the feminine, not the aggressive intensity of the male; instead of forgetting her in the fury of his own baffled desire and seizing her, to crush her until he had wrung some sensation, no matter what, from those unmoved nerves of hers, he restrained himself, hid his emotion as swiftly as he could, turned it off with a jest—"And I've let my coffee grow cold!" He was once more Boris of the boyish vanity that feared, more than ridicule, the triumph of a woman over him. He would rather have risked losing her than have given her the opportunity to see and perhaps enjoy her power.
Presently Narcisse came into view. The lamp was relighted; the three talked together; he was not alone with Neva again, made no attempt to be.