"But you haven't had any cake," Sylvia protested. "_Vous vous fichez de moi_," he growled. "_Vous m'avez posé un sale lapin._" He looked like a greedy boy, a plump spoiled child that has been deprived of a promised treat. "What did she come here for," he demanded, "if she's not prepared to behave like any other girl? You can tell her from me that finer girls--girls in Paris--have been glad enough to be friends with me." "Caprice and mystery are the prerogatives of woman," Sylvia said. "I'm glad she can afford to be capricious when she has not enough money to pay for her food." "I'm not going to argue with you about your behavior, though I could say a good deal about it. At present I can't be as rude as I should like. You see, you've just paid me the compliment of declining to accept the offer of myself. The fact that either I am sufficiently inhuman or that you are too bestial for the notion of any intercourse between us leaves me with a real hope in my heart that there is a difference between you and me. You've no idea of the lowering effect, nay more, of the absolute despair it would cast over my view of life, had I to regard you as belonging to the same natural order as myself. It would involve belief in the universal depravity of man." "_Ah, vous m'emmerdez!_" he shouted, as he ran from the room. Sylvia cried after him to remember the fate of the Gadarene shrine and to avoid going down-stairs too fast. Then to herself she added: "Ecstasies and dreams of self-abnegation! What are they beside the pleasure of conflict face to face? The pleasure would have been keener, though, if I could have hurt him physically."