ant to ride in a carriage, because I
want to wear jewels and own a dozen servants, and trample on the pride
of women plainer than myself. I hate your humble home, I hate your stiff
Dutch kitchen, I hate your sordid ways and the decent respectability
that is all you can offer me. Were you beautiful as Adonis, it would
make no difference. I was born to drink wine and not water, and I shall
never forgive you for forcing me to take your crystal goblet in my
hands, while, if I had waited--'

"She stopped, panting. I let my whole pent-up jealousy out in a word.

"'Edwin Urquhart has not even a crystal goblet to offer you. He is
poorer than I am, and will remain so till he has actually married Miss
Dudleigh.'

"'Don't I know it!' she flashed out. 'If it had been otherwise do you
think--'

"She had the grace or the wisdom to falter. I regret it now. I regret
that she did not go on and reveal her whole soul to me in one fell burst
of feeling. As it was, I trembled with jealousy and passion, but I did
not cast her from me.

"'Then you acknowledge--' I cried.

"But she would acknowledge nothing. 'I love no one,' she asserted, 'no
one. I want what I want, but none of you can give it to me.'

"Then blame me as you will, I took a great resolve. I determined to give
her what she craved; convinced of her sordid nature, convinced of her
heartlessness and the folly of ever thinking she could even understand,
much less reciprocate my passion, I was so much under her sway at that
moment that I would have flung at her feet kingdoms had I possessed
them. Flushing, I seized her hand.

"'You do not know what a man in love can do,' I cried. 'Trust me; give
me yourself as you have promised, and sooner or later I will give you
what you have asked. I am not a weak man or an incompetent one. Politics
opens a vast field to an ambitious nature, and if war breaks out, as we
all expect it will, you will see me rise to the front, if I have you for
my wife and inspiration.'

"The scorn in her eyes did not abate. 'O you men!' she cried. 'You think
you give us everything with a promise. A war! What is the history of
wars? Demolished homes, broken fortunes, rack, ruin and desolation. Is
there gold, or honor, or ease in these? A war! It will not be a war. It
will be a struggle in which men will fight barefoot and on empty
stomachs for the privilege of calling themselves free. I have no
sympathy with such a war. It robs us of comfort in the present