"And you wish other men to ask you to marry them, I suppose?"

Marcello was a little pale, but he tried to throw all the contempt he
could command into his tone. Aurora smiled sweetly.

"Naturally," she said. "I'm only a woman."

"Which means that I'm a fool to care for you!"

"You are, if you think I'm not worth caring for." The girl laughed.

This was so very hard to understand that Marcello knit his smooth young
brow and looked very angry, but could find nothing to say on the spur of
the moment. All women are born with the power to put a man into such a
position that he must either contradict himself, hold his tongue, or fly
into a senseless rage. They do this so easily, that even after the
experience of a life-time we never suspect the trap until they pull the
string and we are caught. Then, if we contradict ourselves, woman utters
an inhuman cry of triumph and jeers at our unstable purpose; if we lose
our tempers instead, she bursts into tears and calls us brutes; and
finally, if we say nothing, she declares, with a show of reason, that we
have nothing to say.

[Illustration: "HE FLUSHED AGAIN, VERY ANGRY THIS TIME, AND HE MOVED
AWAY TO LEAVE HER, WITHOUT ANOTHER WORD."]


Marcello lost his temper.