“You should have been a man, Elizabeth,” he muttered.
She shook her head, smiling as though not ill-pleased at the compliment.
“The power of a man is so limited,” she declared. “A woman has more weapons.”
“More weapons indeed,” the professor agreed, as his eyes traveled over the slim yet wonderful perfection of her form, lingered for a moment at the little knot of lace at her throat, wrestled with the delicate sweetness of her features, struggling hard to think from whom among his ancestors could have come a creature so physically attractive.
“More weapons, indeed,” he repeated. “Elizabeth, what a gift—what a gift!”
“You speak,” she replied, “as though it were an evil one.”
“I was only thinking,” he said, “that it seems a pity. You are so wonderful, we might have found an easier and a less dangerous way to fortune.”
She smiled.
“The Bohemian blood in me, I suppose,” she remarked. “The crooked ways attract, you know, when one has been brought up as I was.”
“Your poor mother had no love for them,” he reminded her.