e can crush you to dust, and there'll still be some wind or
other that'ud blow your ashes to his feet. He's all man--man that's
got the brute in him, too--and you're all woman, woman that's got
the mating instinct in her, and will go like the lioness across the
miles of desert, without food and without water, when once she hears
the song of sex in the hungry throat of her mate. Oh, it's a pretty
little story, too strong for a drawing-room; but Darwin'll tell it
you, Huxley'll tell it you. But you'll never read Darwin, and you'll
never read Huxley--except in a man's eyes. Oh, I know you think I'm
a beast, I know you think I've got no sense of refinement at all,
that I might have been a man just as well as a woman. Lord! how your
friend Traill would hate me, 'cause he's got all I've got and more--in
himself. But I don't care what you say about that letter--the
letter's nothing. It's the gift that's the thing. That's the song
of sex if you like; and whether you return it, or whether you don't,
you'll answer it, as he meant you to. You'll go creeping across the
desert, and you won't touch water, and you won't touch food, till
you've reached him."

She stood there, shaking the words out of her, the revolutionary in
her eyes and God's truth fearlessly in her breath. Then she lit a
Virginian cigarette and walked out of the room.

CHAPTER XX

There were occasions, as he had said, when Traill met his sister.
They were infrequent, as infrequent as he could make them. And they
were seldom, if ever, at her house in Sloane Street.

One evening, some three weeks or less after his parting with Sally,
he took her out to dinner. He donned evening dress, loudly cursing
the formality, and brought her to a fashionable restaurant, where
he gently cursed the abject civility of the waiters beneath his
breath.

"They're not men," he said to his sister; "they're worms of the
underworld, waiting for the corpse to be lowered its regulation six
feet."

Mrs. Durlacher shuddered. "You make use of horrible similes
sometimes, Jack," she said.

"I see some horrible things," said Traill. "Look at that waiter,
hovering like a vulture, while the fat old gentleman from Aberdeen
goes through the items of the bill. He might just as well shut one
eye and stand on one leg to make the picture complete. That's rather
a pretty girl, too, at the same table."

His sister looked in the direction. "Why, he's not from Aberdeen,"
she said, daintily.