“You cannot do more than suppose? People will hardly understand you if you can only ‘suppose’ you are happy!”
She flashed a look upon him of disdain which he felt rather than saw.
“Do I expect people to understand me?” she demanded. “Do I wish them to do so? I am as indifferent to ‘people’ and their opinions as you are!”
“That is saying a great deal!” he rejoined. “But,—I am a man—you are a woman. Women must study conventions——”
“I need not,” she interrupted him. “Nor should you speak of my sex, since you yourself say I am sexless.”
He was silent. She had given him a straight answer. Some words of a great scientist from whom he had gained much of his own knowledge came back to his memory:
“To attain true and lasting life, all passions must be subjugated,—all animosities of nature destroyed. Attraction draws, not only its own to itself, but the aura or spirit of other things which it appropriates so far as it is able. And this appropriation or fusion of elements is either life-giving or destructive.”
He repeated the words “This appropriation or fusion of elements is either life-giving or destructive”—to himself, finding a new force in their meaning and application.
“Diana,” he said, presently, “I am beginning to find you rather a difficult puzzle!”
“I have found myself so for some time,” she answered. “But it does not matter. Nothing really matters.”