at Gerald was saying.
Because she had a suspicion that it was about Violet he was talking. And
she had from the first been curious about Violet and his feelings with
regard to her. As curious as if she had been jealous.

"There is a person--" he said, in the suppressed voice of one
communicating a secret, "of whom I used to dream very often. Not because
I wished to. In the days when I wished to, she came seldom. But when I
dreaded it, she began to come, and do what I would, oppose to her what
hardness I could, she could be so sinisterly dreadful and unkind that it
was like a knife in me. Try to shut her out as I might, she would force
her way in and make me suffer. Why? Why did she want to?... I will tell
you what I believe. Some women feel their beauty to depend upon their
power to create suffering. If not happy suffering, then the other kind.
If men grow indifferent to it, they feel their beauty passing, and if it
goes there is nothing left that they care for. The unremitting quest of
their lives therefore is to feed the blood of men to their beauty, and
if they can not do it in any other manner they pick the locks of sleep
and get at them in that way. But the last time this person came, a
surprise awaited her. And the same, I will confess, awaited me. My heart
was like so much sawdust, so far as one drop of blood that she could
wring from it. And now she won't come again, I believe, for why should
she come? She will look a little anxiously in the glass, very likely, to
see if she has begun to fade. I should be sorry to know that the least
of her golden hairs had faded--they were so lovely. It's wrong all the
same to practise sorcery. You don't, Aurora, that is one reason why I
like to be with you. Women as God made them are strong enough, He knows!
It's unfair to use sorcery besides, to make themselves beautiful to the
point of distraction, and desired to the point of pain. And then their
barbarous methods! That low game of using a man's weakness for the
increase of their own glory, making a jealous fool wilfully out of a
decent fellow, and a baby out of a self-respecting man. You, Aurora, you
are good as good bread, you are restful as a bank of moss. You would
never do what the others do. Would you, Aurora? You needn't answer me. I
know."

"If what you mean is that I'm not much of a co-quette," she came in
quickly, to prevent his continuing, "I guess you're right. Take it since
I was born, I've been called a good m