"I sometimes feel that I'm making none. She looks at me half amused and half astonished when I express my opinions; I have to keep a curb on myself when I talk to her. In fact, I've once or twice got mad. I can take a joke, but her condescending smile is riling."
"Then why do you want to marry her?"
"It puzzles me when I think it over coolly, but that's difficult. When she's near me I only know that I want her." His eyes gleamed and his face grew flushed as he proceeded. "Guess it must be her wonderful eyes and hair and skin; the shape of her, the way she stands, the grit she shows. Once when I said something she flashed out at me in a fury, and I liked her for it." He clenched a big hand. "Somehow I'm going to get her!"
Mrs. Denton smiled. The savagery of his passion did not jar on her; she admired his determined boldness. She respected force that was guided by capacity; she liked a man who was strong or cunning enough to take what he desired. Her niece, however, held different views.
"That sounds genuine," she said. "Still, you had better talk to Geraldine in a more polished strain."
"No; I'd do it badly, and it wouldn't pay. There's red blood in me, and I haven't found much difference in men and women. If you hit straight at their human nature, you can't go wrong. A girl's never offended because you like her for being pretty."
He was wise, in that he knew his limitations and never pretended to be what he was not. His knowledge of human weaknesses had been profitable, for he had not scrupled to prey upon them, but he erred in assuming that his was the only rule of life. Virtue he frankly regarded as either absence of desire or a sentimental pose.
"You're too coarse, too crude in your methods," Mrs. Denton persisted. "If you're not careful, you'll disgust Geraldine. You don't seem to see that she's different from the girls you are accustomed to."
Mappin laughed.
"Oh," he said, "at heart, they're all the same."