"I expended the last of my calf love on Mrs. Kaye. I was blinded by passion; but that my emotional depths were not even stirred was manifested by the rapidity of my convalescence. We were utterly unsuited. In many respects I should have been ashamed of her. Blood must always tell in England—although in America—if Mrs. Hofer is a type—well, this is the land of reversed theories. Mrs. Kaye and I would have been at swords' points in less than a year. The next time I choose a wife it will be with my judgment."
"And are you no longer capable of love?"
"Oh, love!" Once more Gwynne gazed down upon the sleepless city, where the lights seemed to powder the upper air with gold dust. "Perhaps. It seemed to me that day in Park Lane that all the heat died out of my veins. I am only just beginning to feel alive once more. But I have no wish as yet to experience the passion of love again—not even with you; although if you would cry off in some respects I don't know but that I should still like to marry you."
"At least you could beat me if I did not behave."
He laughed. "I don't doubt I should want to. No, I'll never let myself go like that again; but I should be sure first that my will was the stronger of the two."
"You carefully abstain from proposing so that I cannot make the retort I should like to."
"You may. I know you won't have me. But that does not alter the fact that the same ancestral lines have given us an inconceivable number of molecules that are subtly responsive. The great cleavage has accomplished as many points of divergence and contrast. Therefore is there, in me, at least, an insistent whisper for ancestral and long denied rights. You will feel it in time—"
"How much you have thought about it!"
"My mind is pretty well oiled: it does not take me years to work out any proposition. To tell you the truth, I have never put that undercurrent of consciousness into words until to-night. All the same, even if I loved you, if I finally believed you to be the stronger of the two, I should take the next boat for England. California wouldn't hold me. And I should not say good-bye."
"That would be a confession of weakness."