frenzy would chill her--would fill her with an emotion that would
enable her to remain mistress of the situation.

At sight of her aversion his eyes sank. ``Forgive me,'' he
muttered. ``You make me--CRAZY.''

``I!'' she cried, laughing in angry derision. ``What have I ever
done to encourage you to be--impertinent?''

``Nothing,'' he admitted. ``That is, nothing but just being
yourself.''

``I can't help that, can I?''

``No,'' said he, adding doggedly: ``But neither can men help
going crazy about you.''

She looked at him sitting there at once penitent and impenitent;
and her mind went back to the thoughts that had engaged it before
he came into view. Marriage-- to marry one of these men, with
their coarse physical ideas of women, with their pitiful weakness
before an emotion that seemed to her to have no charm whatever.
And these were the creatures who ruled the world and compelled
women to be their playthings and mere appendages! Well--no doubt
it was the women's own fault, for were they not a poor,
spiritless lot, trembling with fright lest they should not find a
man to lean on and then, having found the man, settling down into
fat and stupid vacuity or playing the cat at the silly game of
social position? But not Jane Hastings! Her bosom heaved and
her eyes blazed scorn as she looked at this person who had dared