and then, as she talked, seemed to grow
angry, sadly angry; and Daylight knew that this anger was against him.

"Then let me explain, and just as straight and simply as you have
asked." She paused, as if casting about for a beginning. "You are
honest and straightforward. Do you want me to be honest and
straightforward as a woman is not supposed to be?--to tell you things
that will hurt you?--to make confessions that ought to shame me? to
behave in what many men would think was an unwomanly manner?"

The arm around her shoulder pressed encouragement, but he did not speak.

"I would dearly like to marry you, but I am afraid. I am proud and
humble at the same time that a man like you should care for me. But
you have too much money. There's where my abominable common sense
steps in. Even if we did marry, you could never be my man--my lover
and my husband. You would be your money's man. I know I am a foolish
woman, but I want my man for myself. You would not be free for me.
Your money possesses you, taking your time, your thoughts, your energy,
everything, bidding you go here and go there, do this and do that.
Don't you see? Perhaps it's pure silliness, but I feel that I can love
much, give much--give all, and in return, though I don't want all, I
want much--and I want much more than your money would permit you to
give me.

"And your money destroys you; it makes you less and less nice. I am not
ashamed to say that I love you, because I shall never marry you. And I
loved you much when I did not know you at all, when you first came down
from Alaska and I first went into the office. You were my hero. You
were the Burning Daylight of the gold-diggings, the daring traveler and
miner. And you looked it. I don't see how any woman could have looked
at you without loving you--then. But you don't look it now.

"Please, please, forgive me for hurting you. You wanted straight talk,
and I am giving it to you. All these last years you have been living
unnaturally. You, a man of the open, have been cooping yourself up in
the cities with all that that means. You are not the same man at all,
and your money is destroying you. You are becoming something different,
something not so healthy, not so clean, not so nice. Your money and
your way of life are doing it. You know it. You haven't the same body
now that you had then. You are putting on flesh, and it is not healthy
flesh. You are kind and genial with me, I know,