Were I a steel
automaton, supplying your wants, I should answer just as well, and in
that case you might remember the laws of matter and apply a little oil
occasionally. What are the motives of your life but dress, admiration,
excitement, a rapid succession of men to pass under your baleful
fascination, and then to pass on crippled in soul for having known
you? Unless you can give Graydon Muir a loving woman's heart, and mean
to cling to him for worse as well as better, you will commit a crime
before God and man if you accept him. With Arnault it is different. In
mind you are near enough of kin to marry. As long as you complied with
fashionable and worldly proprieties, he would be content; but a man
with a heart and soul in his body would perish in the desert of a home
that your selfishness would create."
"It's awful for you to talk to me in this way!" she whined, wincing
and crying under his arraignment.
"It's awful that I have to speak to you in this way, either to make
you realize what deformities your beauty hides, so that you may apply
the remedy, or else, if you will not, to promote your union with a man
content to take for a wife a belle, and not a woman.
"I suppose I am chiefly to blame, though, or you would be different,"
he added, with a dark, introspective look.
Pages:
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287
288
289
290
291
292
293
294
295
296
297
298
299
300
301
302
303