.
A couple of thousand years hence there will be some other convention in
its place called by another name; but love will be precisely the same
passion that it is now, because it's purely human and not subject to
any conventions when it is real--any more than you can make the
circulation of your blood conventional or the beating of your heart, or
hunger, or thirst, or sleepiness, instead of being natural as they all
are.'

'You're a materialist,' said Margaret, finding nothing else to say.

'I don't think so, but whatever I am, I'm in earnest, and I don't
pretend to be anything but human.'

He stopped and looked straight into Margaret's eyes; and somehow she
did not turn away, for there was nothing in his that she was afraid to
meet. Just then she would rather have tried to stare him out of
countenance than look for one minute at the woman's face in the
picture, which he said was so like her. She did not remember that in
all her life anything had so strangely disturbed her as that likeness.
She had seen pictures and statues by the score in exhibitions and
public places, which should have offended her maiden modesty far more.
What was there in that one painting that could offend at all? A woman's
head thrown back, a woman's hand pressing her hair to her breast--it
ended there, and that was all; and what was that, compared with the
acres of raw nudity that crowd the walls of the Salon every year.

Logotheti said that he was 'human,' and she felt it was true, in the
sense that he was a 'primitive,' or an 'elementary being,' as some
people would say. The fact that he had all the profound astuteness of
the true Oriental did not conflict with this in the least. The
astuteness of the Asiatic, and of the Greek of Asia, is an instinct
like that of the wild animal; talent alone is 'human' in any true
sense, but instinct is animal, even in men, whether it shows itself in
matters of money-getting or matters of taste.

Yet somehow Margaret was beginning to be attracted by the man. He had
never shown the least lack of respect, or of what Mrs. Rushmore would
have called 'refinement,' and he had done nothing which even distantly
resembled taking a liberty. He spoke quietly, and even gently, and his
eyes did not gloat upon her face and figure as some men's eyes did.
Even as to the picture, he had not led her to see it, for she had gone
up to it herself, drawn to it against her will, and he had only told
the truth in saying that it