"Miss Wayland will take no hand in my affairs. I doubt if she will even realize what this trouble is all about," he said, a trifle stiffly. "I suppose I did want to play the hero, and I dare say I did use you and the others, but you knew that all the time."
"Why won't she help you?" queried Cherry. "Doesn't she care enough about you? Doesn't she know enough to understand your plight?"
"Yes, but this is my fight, and I've got to make good without her assistance. She isn't the sort to marry a failure, and she has left me to make my own way. Besides, she would not dare go contrary to her father's wishes, even if she desired—that is part of her education. Oh, Wayne Wayland's opposition isn't all I have had to overcome. I have had to show his daughter that I am one of her own kind, for she hates weakness."
"And you think that woman loves you! Why, she isn't a woman at all—she doesn't know what love means. When a woman loves, do you imagine she cares for money or fame or success? If I cared for a man, do you think I'd stop to ask my father if I might marry him or wait for my lover to prove himself worthy of me? Do you think I'd send him through the hell you have suffered to try his metal?" She laughed outright. "Why, I'd become what he was, and I'd fight with him. I'd give him all I had—money, position, friends, influence; if my people objected, I'd tell them to go hang, I'd give them up and join him! I'd use every dollar, every wile and feminine device that I possessed in his service. When a woman loves, she doesn't care what the world says; the man may be a weakling, or worse, but he is still her lover, and she will go to him."
The words had come tumbling forth until Cherry was forced to pause for breath.
"You don't understand," said Boyd. "You are primitive; you have lived in the open; she is exactly your opposite. Conservatism is bred in her, and she can't help her nature. It was hard even for me to understand at first; but when I saw her life, when I saw how she had been reared from childhood, I understood perfectly. I would not have her other than she is; it is enough for me to know that in her own way she cares for me."
Cherry tossed her head in derision. "For my part, I prefer red blood to sap, and when I love I want to know it—I don't want to have it proved to me like a problem in geometry. I want to love and hate, and do wild, impulsive things against my own judgment."
"Have you ever loved in that way?" he inquired, abruptly.
"Yes," she answered, without hesitation, looking him squarely in the eye with an expression he could not fathom. "Thank Heaven, I'm not the artificial kind! As you say, I'm primitive. I have lived!" Her crimson lips curled scornfully.
"I didn't expect you to understand her," he said. "But she loves me. And I—well, she is my religion. A man must have some God; he can't worship his own image."