The color mounted to Quintard’s face.
“My dear Miss Suydam, this is the nineteenth century—the latter quarter. Love of that sort is an episode, a detached link.” He leaned forward and smiled. “I suppose you think I talk like the villain in the old-fashioned novel,” he said. “But codes of all sorts have their evolutions and modifications. The heroes of the past would cut a ridiculous figure in the civilization of to-day. I am not a villain. I am merely a man of my prosaic times.”
It was as she had thought—no romance, no love of the past. But the man had a certain power; there was no denying that. And his audacity and brutal frankness, so different from Cryder’s cold-blooded acting, fascinated her.
“Oh, no! I do not think you a villain,” she said; “only I don’t see how you could have had the cruelty to——”
“I am inclined to be faithful, Miss Suydam,” he interrupted. “In my extreme youth it was the reverse, but experience has taught me to appreciate and to hold on to certain qualities when I find them—for in combination they are rare. When one comes to the cross-roads, and shakes hands good-bye with Youth, his departing comrade gives him a little packet. The packet is full of seeds, and the label is ‘philosophy.’”
“I found that packet long before I got to the cross-roads,” said Hermia, with a laugh—“that is, if I ever had any youth. How old are you?”
“Oh, only thirty-four as yet. But I got to the cross-roads rather early. What do you mean by saying that you never had any youth?”
“Nothing. Are all those European stories about you true?”
“What stories?”
“Oh! all those stories about women. They say you have had the most dreadful adventures.”