“I love him all the more deeply,” she went on firmly, “because of his miserable childhood. I'll do my best to make up for the years of cruelty and hunger and suffering through which he passed. What right have you to sit in judgment on him without a hearing? You've known him two hours——”
Jane shrugged her shoulders.
“Two minutes was quite enough.”
“And you judge by what standard?”
“My five senses, and my sixth sense above all. One look at his square bulldog jaw, his massive neck and the deformity of his delicate hands and feet! I hear the ignorant patois of the East Side underworld. I smell the brimstone in his suppressed rage at my dislike. There's something uncanny in the sensuous droop of his heavy eyelids and the glitter of his steel-blue eyes. There's something incongruous in his whole personality. I was afraid of him the moment I saw him.”
Mary broke into hysterical laughter.
“And if my five senses and my intuitions contradict yours? Who is to decide? If I loved him on sight——If I looked into his eyes and saw the soul of my mate? If their cold fires thrill me with inexpressible passion? If I see in his massive neck and jaw the strength of an irresistible manhood, the power to win success and to command the world? If I see in his slender hands and small feet lines of exquisite beauty—am I to crush my senses and strangle my love to please your idiotic prejudice?”
Jane threw up her hands in despair.
“Certainly not! If you're blind and deaf I can't keep you from committing suicide. I'd lock you up in an asylum for the insane if I had the power to save you from the clutches of the brute.”
Mary drew herself erect and faced her friend.