ood! O let us be joyful! Keep well, Manella!--and
be 'quite beautiful'--as you are! To be quite beautiful is a fine
thing--not so fine as it used to be in the Greek period--still, it has
its advantages! I wonder what you will do with your beauty?"

As he spoke, he rose, stretching and shaking him self like a forest
animal.

"What will you do with it?" he repeated--"You must give it to somebody!
You must transmit it to your offspring! That's the old law of
nature--it's getting a bit monotonous, still it's the law! Now she--the
wonderful white woman--she's all for upsetting the law! Fortunately
she's not beautiful--"

"She IS!" exclaimed Manella--"_I_ think her so!" He looked down upon
her from his superior height with a tolerant amusement.

"Really! YOU think her so! And SHE thinks you so! Quite a mutual
admiration society! And both of you obsessed by the same one man! I
pity that man! The only thing for him to do is to keep out of it! No,
Manella!--think as you like, she is not beautiful. You ARE beautiful.
But SHE is clever, You are NOT clever. You may thank God for that! SHE
is outrageously, unnaturally, cursedly clever! And her cleverness makes
her see the sham of life all through; the absurdity of birth that ends
in death--the freakishness of civilisation to no purpose--and she's out
for something else. She wants some thing newer than sex-attraction and
family life. A husband would bore her to extinction--the care of
children would send her into a lunatic asylum!"

Manella looked bewildered.

"I cannot understand!" she said--"A woman lives for husband and
children!"

"SOME women do!" he answered--"Not all! There are a good few who don't
want to stay on the animal level. Men try to keep them there--but it's
a losing game nowadays. ('Foxes have holes and birds of the air have
nests'--but we cannot fail to see that when Mother Fox has reared her
puppies she sends them off about their own business and doesn't know
them any more--likewise Mother Bird does the same. Nature has no
sentiment.) We have, because we cultivate artificial feelings--we
imagine we 'love,' when we only want something that pleases us for the
moment. To live, as you say, for husband and children would make a
woman a slave--a great many women are slaves--but they are beginning to
get emancipated--the woman with the gold hair, whom you so much admire,
is emancipated."

Manella gave a slight disdainful movement of her head.

"That only means