“Love is such a mere name to me,” she said, “it seems such a collapsable bubbly thing and put to such feeble uses. You want me to be your wife then, and you offer me a whole heart full of love, whatever that may mean. I must be honest too, and tell you that I shouldn’t know how to dispose of a whole heart full of love. I know nothing at all practically about the matter, and theoretically it has never interested me. My situation is hard to explain,” she exclaimed, with a petulant sweeping movement of her hand, “in the face of all this I want to accept your offer, I don’t know why, I really believe it is not I, Gwen Waring, that wants this, it is something outside me that wants it for me. I never felt so impersonal in all my life.” He winced, her honesty, to say the least of it, was a trifle bald. “Perhaps I am more concerned in it than I think,” she went on with a queer intense serenity, dissecting herself audibly, “I like new sensations, I am curious, most things are so flat and boring.” Strange started forward and was about to speak, she raised her hand imperiously. “Stop!” she cried, “I must finish, I want you quite clearly to understand that if I take you at your word and become your wife—wife,” she repeated, “how astonishing the word sounds in connection with me!” She laughed in an untranslatable way and went on, “Remember and understand that I am doing it as an experiment.” He flushed, it was his own precise thought but it seemed less hideous when thought than when spoken. “An experiment,” she repeated, “but whether it is fair to try experiments in lives is another matter. I wish—” she cast a half-wistful, half-provoked look at him, “I wish you were sufficiently clear and reasonable yourself to help me to answer the question—I am so ignorant in these matters.” A sudden crimson rushed to her cheeks, she was furious. What right had she to blush like a dairy-maid and mislead the man? “I’m not blushing properly, as girls ought to blush,” she explained, “I am merely angry, I feel caught in a trap. Why can’t I tell you to begone and leave me at peace?” she demanded, looking at him with curious swift repulsion, “I have never found any difficulty before,—why don’t you help me?” In spite of his love, Strange shook with laughter. It was no laughing matter for Gwen, she kept her eyes fixed on him, angry and full of pain. “You stand there and laugh—laugh! I wish to mercy I could. Don’t you know I am going to accept you—I, who don’t know what love means—I, who am, I believe, sexless, don’t you know you’re mad and don’t you think it’s rather degrading to give all you offer me for nothing? After all, it is not absolutely necessary to my salvation that I should make experiments on you.” She felt a sudden tiredness come on her and nestled back in her cushions.