Yet, as I thought of this, I found myself again admiring her. She was
handsome, independent, distinctly original, and possessing capacity for
great things. Besides, so far, she had not been actively vindictive--
simply passively indifferent to the sufferings of others. She seemed to
regard results more than means. All she did not like she could empty
into the mill of the destroying gods: just as General Grant poured
hundreds of thousands of men into the valley of the James, not thinking
of lives but victory, not of blood but triumph. She too, even in her
cruelty, seemed to have a sense of wild justice which disregarded any
incidental suffering.

I could see that Mr. Devlin was attracted by her, as every man had been
who had ever met her; for, after all, man is but a common slave to
beauty: virtue he respects, but beauty is man's valley of suicide.
Presently she turned to Mr. Devlin, having, as it seemed to me, made
Roscoe and Ruth sufficiently uncomfortable. With that cheerful
insouciance which was always possible to her on the most trying
occasions, she immediately said, as she had often said to me, that she
had come to Mr. Devlin to be amused for the morning, perhaps the whole
day. It was her way, her selfish way, to make men her slaves.

Mr. Devlin gallantly said that he was at her disposal, and with a kind of
pride added that there was plenty in the valley which would interest her;
for he was a frank, bluff man, who would as quickly have spoken
disparagingly of what belonged to himself, if it was not worthy,
as have praised it.

"Where shall we go first?" he said. "To the mill?"