ld frump before I go?
Why should you and I not be as happy as we can afford to be while we're
young and attractive and unspoiled?"

"I want you to be as happy as you can afford to be, Valerie.... But you
can't afford to fall in love."

"Why?"

"Because it will make you miserable."

"But it doesn't."

"It will if it is love."

"It is, Rita," said the girl, smiling out of her dark eyes--deep brown
wells of truth that the other gazed into and saw a young soul there,
fearless and doomed.

"Valerie," she said, shivering, "you won't do--_that_--will you?"

"Dear, I cannot marry him, and I love him. What else am I to do?"

"Well, then--then you'd better marry him!" stammered Rita, frightened.
"It's better for you! It's better--"

"For _me_? Yes, but how about him?"

"What do you care about him!" burst out Rita, almost incoherent in her
fright and anger. "He's a man; he can take care of himself. Don't think
of him. It isn't your business to consider him. If he wants to marry you
it's his concern after all. Let him do it! Marry him and let him fight
it out with his friends! After all what does a man give a girl that
compares with what she gives him? Men--men--" she stammered--"they're
all alike in the depths of their own hearts. We are incidents to
them--no matter how they say they love us. They _can't_ love as we do.
They're not made for it! We are part of the game to them; they are the
whole game to us; we are, at best, an important episode in their
careers; they are our whole careers. Oh, Valerie! Valerie! listen to me,
child! That man could go on living and painting and eating and drinking
and sleeping and getting up to dress and going to bed to sleep, if you
lay dead in your grave. But if you loved him, and were his wife--or God
forgive me!--his mistress, the day he died _you_ would die, though your
body might live on. I know--_I_ know, Valerie. Death--whether it be his
body or his love, ends all for the woman who really loves him. Woman's
loss is eternal. But man's loss is only temporary--he is made that way,
fashioned so. Now I tell you the exchange is not fair--it has never been
fair--never will be, never can be. And I warn you not to give this man
the freshness of your youth, the happy years of your life, your
innocence, the devotion which he will transmute into passion with his
accursed magic! I warn you not to forsake the tranquillity of ignorance,
the blessed immunity from that devil's paradise that you