“For shame!” she cried.
“Shame? What is that?”
“What I feel for you, Your—Your Lowness.”
“Good! I must be getting bad. It is well that you pay me an out-loud compliment now and then, when I’m paying you with the utmost of my unlimited power. You encourage me to proceed. Although I don’t wish you to doff your gentle ways—they’ll serve as a model for your she-destroyers—you must keep clearly in mind that our chief emotion down here is hate—immortal hate.”
“Hate immortal? I find it hard to think of such a thing. I am sure that I never could hate for long. On Earth, I might stay angry with some one through the day, but I couldn’t go to sleep until I forgave.”
His Majesty scowled down at her, evidently disturbed. “It’s all right to look that idea. Of course you don’t feel it. You certainly must hate these earthlings you’re telling us about.”
“You are wrong. I don’t hate them. Somehow I can’t hate any of them.” With a catch of breath, she added: “If you said immortal love, now——”
“Tut, tut, my child. Isn’t it hot enough down here? Don’t heat up my imagination.”
“But didn’t you ever feel love for anybody?”
“No, nor wouldn’t if I could. Love is weakening—orangeade for temperance fools like General Sam. What is it anyhow? Some old scientist has defined it as ‘merely the attraction of billions of atoms, electrically charged in the system, corresponding to the same number of the same sort of atoms in a person of the opposite sex.’ There you have it. What is so marvelous about that—what to make such a to-do over?”