"See here!" he said—"Before you go I want yon to know a thing or two,—you may as well learn once for all my views on women. They're brief, but they're fixed. And they're straight! Women are nothing—just necessary for the continuation of the race—no more. They may be beautiful or homely—it's all one—they serve the same purpose. I'm under no delusions about them. Without men they are utterly useless,—mere waste on the wind! To idealise them is a stupid mistake. To think that they can do anything original, intellectual or imaginative is to set one's self down an idiot. YOU,—you the spoilt only child of one of the biggest rascal financiers in New York,—YOU, left alone in the world with a fortune so vast as to be almost criminal—you think you are something superlative in the way of women,—you play the Cleopatra,—you are convinced you can draw men after you—but it's your money that draws them,—not YOU! Can't you see that?—or are you too vain to see it? And you've no mercy on them,—you make them believe you care for them and then you throw them over like empty nutshells! That's your way! But you never fooled ME,—and you never will!"
He released her as suddenly as he had grasped her,—she drew her white draperies round her shoulders with a statuesque grace, and lifted her head, smiling.
"Empty nutshells are a very good description of men who come after a woman for her money"—she observed, placidly—"and it's quite natural that the woman should throw them over her shoulder. There's nothing in them—not even a flavour! No—never fooled you,—you fooled yourself—you are fooling yourself now, only you don't know it. But there!—let's finish talking! I like the romance of the situation—you in your shirt-sleeves on a hill in California, and I in silken stuff and diamonds paying you a moonlight visit—it's really quite novel and charming!—but it can't go on for ever! Just now you said you wanted me to know a thing or two, and I presume you have explained yourself. What you think or what you don't think about women doesn't interest me. I'm one of the 'wastes on the wind!' I shall not aid in the continuation of the race,—heaven forbid! The race is too stupid and too miserable to merit continuance. Everything has been done for it that can be done, over and over again, from the beginning—till now,—and now—NOW!" She paused, and despite himself the tone of her voice sent a thrill through his blood of something like fear.
"NOW?—well! What NOW?" he demanded.
She lifted one hand and pointed upwards. Her face in the moonbeams looked austere and almost spectral in outline.
"Now—the Change!" she answered—"The Change when all things shall be made new!"
A silence followed her words,—a strange and heavy silence.
It was broken by her voice hushed to an extreme softness, yet clearly audible.
"Good-night!—good-bye!"
He turned impatiently away to avoid further leave-taking—then, on a sudden impulse, his mood changed.