rawled.

"Do you hear it?"

"No."

"Did you ever hear your own heart beat, Alice?"

"No."

He had both her hands now. "Would you like to hear it?"

She pulled away her hands sharply. "Yes," she replied with defiance.

"But you pulled away your hands first," said he.

He heard her breathe heavily for a moment, but she said nothing.
"Yes," he said, as if she had spoken, "it is true."

"What is true?"

"What you are saying to yourself just now--that you hate me."

She beat the floor with her foot.

"How you hate me, Alice!"

"Oh, no."

"Yes, indeed you do."

"I wonder why," she said, and she trembled a little.

"I know why." He had come close to her again. "Shall I tell you why?"

She said "No," hurriedly.

"I am so glad you say No." He spoke passionately, and yet there was
banter in his voice, or so it seemed to her. "It is because you fear
to be told; it is because you had hoped that I did not know."

"Tell me why I hate you!" she cried.

"Tell me first that you do."

"Oh, I do, I do indeed!" She said the words in a white heat of hatred.

Before she could prevent him he had raised her hand to his lips.

"Dear Alice!" he said.

"Why is it?" she demanded.

"Listen!" he said. "Listen to your heart, Alice; it is beating now. It
is telling you why. Does it need an interpreter? It is saying you hate
me because you think I don't love you."

"Don't you?" she asked fiercely.

"No," Tommy said.

Her hands were tearing each other, and she could not trust herself to
speak. She sat down deadly pale in the chair he had offered her.

"No man ever loved you," he said, leaning over her with his hand on
the back of the chair. "You are smiling at that, I know; but it is
true, Lady Disdain. They may have vowed to blow their brains out, and
seldom did it; they may have let you walk over them, and they may have
become your fetch-and-carry, for you were always able to drive them
crazy; but love does not bring men so low. They tried hard to love
you, and it was not that they could not love; it was that you were
unlovable. That is a terrible thing to a woman. You think you let them
try to love you, that you might make them your slaves when they
succeeded; but you made them your slaves because they failed. It is a
power given to your cold and selfish nature in place of the capacity
for being able to be loved, with which women not a hundredth part as
beautiful as you are dowered, and you have a raging desire,