"As, for instance, falling in love?"
"Falling in love with impossible people," he corrected. "What do you know of love, anyhow? I may know."
"You!" she said scornfully.
"Yes—now. I've seen the rest, and if I love, it's the young, the beautiful, the past. I won't explain: you must experience to comprehend! Another thing about yourself that you don't understand: to love and to be loved are two different things. A woman like you will always be loved. You won't love, really love, not for a long while—not until you begin to grow old! What stops you from using me? Family? You have none! Friends? Bah!"
"And the man?" she said coldly, beginning fiercely to resent the brutality of his philosophy, though she had determined to remain impersonal and amused.
"The man!" He laughed, throwing himself back in his chair, scowling a little at this direct personal allusion. "There you have it! With one question you have betrayed your whole morality—woman's morality! The man! If I were a young cub with a romantic strut, talking big, it would be different; it would not be a case of selling yourself—it would be an infatuation!"
"Perhaps it is our morality," she said indignantly, thinking of Massingale, and led insensibly into a defensive attitude. "Say it is! It's at least natural!"
"You mean, in my case, the thing that makes you recoil is myself?" he said abruptly. "More than any other consideration? Say it!"
"Quite true!"
"If I were asking you to marry me, if you had that opportunity, would that feeling stop you?"