"I shall give you beauty for ashes, Marcella. You and I together, we can go marching on in seven-league boots! There's a kingliness about you. Listen to the things I say to you unconsciously! I can't say the pretty, graceful, soft things we say to women! There's a kingliness, Marcella—not only about you, but about me too. We're not the common ruck. You're not happy, are you?"
"Sometimes," she said softly.
"No, you're not—not honourably! Kings can't be happy with commoners! They don't speak the same language. If you're happy it's because you let yourself consciously come down. And—wallow. As I have—"
Her face flamed to think how he had seen through her. He saw it, and cried triumphantly:
"I knew it! In the higher parts of you you're always adventuring, always lonely, always hungry. As I am. You never find a harbour, a friend, a feast. Do you? No, I don't need you to tell me. I know all about it. I have known it for more years than you have lived yet."
"But really, I am happy sometimes," she protested. He caught her hands and held them so that she had to look at him.
"With Louis? Is your brain happy with Louis? Do you ever come within touching distance of each other? Is your spirit happy with Louis? Isn't it always hungry, holding out begging hands? Are your brain and your spirit not always calling you back and scorning you when you let your body wallow—slacken and take cheap thrills?"
"Oh, it's wicked that you should know these things about me," she cried.
"No. It isn't wicked at all. I know the same about myself. I've taken cheap things. Biology got me on the wrong tack at first; with a biological mind I saw everything via the body. Biology's a dragon one has to slay; that's why, in my work, I've taken to psychology instead. Love-making! I told you, right at the first, I always made love to women—. I always have done it, and always should have gone on doing it if I had never met you."
"But why—if you despise it?"