"How can you speak so lightly of such matters?" "What matters?" "Love, of course." "Why, do men alone, because they laugh at women for taking love seriously, have the right to take it lightly? And of what love am I speaking lightly,--the love you say you feigned for me, or the love you say you thought you had awakened in me?" "The love I vow I do _not_ feign for you! The love I wish I _could_ awaken in you!" "Why, captain, what a change has come over you!" "Yes. I have risen from my sleep. If you, in waking from yours, put off love, I, in waking from mine, took on love!" She smiled, as with amusement. "A somewhat speedy taking on, I should say." "Love's born of a glance, _I_ say!" "Haven't I heard that before?" reflectively. "Aye, for I said it here when I did not mean it, and now I say it again when I do!" "And of what particular glance am I to suppose--" "Of the first glance I cast on you when you entered this room in that gown. Yes, born of a glance--" "Born of a gown, in that case, don't you mean?" derisively. "Of a gown, or a glance, or a what you wish." "I don't wish it should be born at all." "You don't wish I should love you?" "I don't wish you should love me or shouldn't love me. I don't wish you--anything. Why should I wish anything of one who is nothing to me?" "Nothing to you! I would you were to me what I am to you!" "What is that, pray?" "An adorer!" "You are a--very amusing gentleman." "You refuse me a glimpse of hope?" "You would like to have it as a trophy, I suppose. You men treasure the memories of your little conquests over foolish women, as an Indian treasures the scalps he takes." "Lord! which sex, I wonder, has the busier scalping-knife?" "I can't speak for all my sex. Some of us seek no scalps--" "You don't have to. I make you a present of mine. I fling it at your feet." "We seek no scalps, I say,--because we don't value them a finger-snap." And she gave a specimen of the kind of finger-snap she did not value them at. "In heaven's name," he said, "say what you do value, that I may strive to become like it! What do you value, I implore you, tell me?" "Oh,--my studies, for one thing,--my French and my music,--" "Could I but translate myself into French, or set myself to an air!" "Nay, I don't care for _comic_ songs!" "I see you like flowers. If I might die, and be buried in your garden, and grow up in the shape of a rose-bush--" "Or a cabbage!" "I fear you don't like that flower." "Better come up in the form of your own Virginia tobacco." "And be smoked by old Mr. Valentine? No, you don't like tobacco. Ah, Miss Philipse, this levity is far from the mood of my heart!" "Why do you indulge in it, then?" "I? Is it I who indulge in levity?" "Assuredly, _I_ do not!" Oh, woman's privilege of saying unabashedly the thing which is not! "No," said he, "for there's no levity in the coldness with which beauty views the wounds it makes."