"I shan't. It's not as if I were intrigued by it. You don't know how I hate it sometimes."

"You hate it, yet you're drawn."

"By what? By my vanity?"

"Not by your vanity, though there is that."

"By what, then?"

"Oh, Jinny, you're a woman."

"Mayn't I be?"

"No," he said brutally, "you mayn't."

For a moment her eyes pleaded: "Mayn't I be a woman?" But she was silent, and he answered her silence rather than her eyes.

"Because you've genius."