Debauched as his youth was, and free from all touch of heart or
conscience--for from his earliest boyhood he had been the pupil of rakes
and fashionable villains--well as he thought he knew all women and their
ways, betraying or betrayed--this creature taught him a new thing, a new
mood in woman, a new power which came upon him like a thunderbolt.

"Gods!" he exclaimed, catching his breath, and even falling back apace,
"Damnation! you are _not_ a woman!"

She laughed again, weaving her roses, but not allowing that his eyes
should loose themselves from hers.

"But now, you called me a goddess and spoke of Olympian heights," she
said; "I am not one--I am a woman who would show other women how to bear
themselves in hours like these. Because I am a woman why should I kneel,
and weep, and rave? What have I lost--in losing you? I should have lost
the same had I been twice your wife. What is it women weep and beat
their breasts for--because they love a man--because they lose his love.
They never have them."

She had finished the wreath, and held it up in the sun to look at it.
What a strange beauty was hers, as she held it so--a heavy, sumptuous
thing--in her white hands, her head thrown backward.

"You marry soon," she asked--"if the match is not broken?"

"Yes," he answered, watching her--a flame growing in his eyes and in his
soul in his own despite.