tion to compare with words
like those? I merely ask you."

With eyes dilated, breath coming quickly, she stared at him, scarcely yet
comprehending the blow which her words had dealt to one of the lords of
creation.

"Mr. Langdon," she said, "do you suppose that I am the sort of girl to
deliberately criticise either your features or your figure?"

"But you did."

"I merely meant that you should infer----"

"I inferred it all right," he said bitterly.

Perplexed, not knowing how to encounter such an unexpected reproach,
vaguely distressed by it, she instinctively attempted to clear herself.

"Please listen. I hadn't any idea of mortifying you by explaining that
you are not qualified by nature to interest the modern woman in----"

He turned a bright red.

"Do you suppose such a condemnation--such a total ostracism--is agreeable
to a man? . . . Is there anything worse you can say about a man than to
inform him that no woman could possibly take the slightest interest in
him?"

"I didn't say that. I said the modern woman----"

"You're all modern."

"It is reported that there are still a few women sufficiently
old-fashioned to----"

"They don't interest me." He looked up at her. "What _you've_ said
has--simply--and completely--spoiled--my life," he said slowly.

"What _I_ said?"

"Yes."

"What have--what could--what I--how--where--who is----" and she checked
herself, eyes on his.

"Yes," he repeated with a curious sort of satisfaction, "you have spoiled
my entire life for me."

"What an utterly--what a wildly absurd and impossible----"

"And you _know_ it!" he insisted, with gloomy triumph.

"Know what?"

"That you've spoiled----"

"Stop! Will you explain to me how----"

"Is it necessary?"

"Necessary? Of course it is! You have made a most grave and serious
and--and heartless charge against a woman----"

"Yes, a heartless one--against you!"

"I? _Heartless?_"

"Cold, deliberate, cruel, unfeeling, merciless, remorseless----"

"Mr. Langdon!"

"Didn't you practically tell me that no woman could endure the sight of a
face and figure like mine?"

"No, I did not. What a--a cruel accusation!"

"What _did_ you mean, then?"

"That--that you are not exactly--qualified to--to become an ancestor of
the physically perfect race which----"

"What _is_ wrong with me, then?"

She looked at him helplessly. "What do you mean?"

"I mean where am I below proof? Where am I lacking? What points count