"I mean," he said, measuring his words, and keeping his eyes steadily upon her, "to undertake the task of your reformation. I am going to turn you into something human--into a feeling, breathing, and, if necessary, a suffering woman. I am going to take away your false standards, to humble your vanity, to mortify your avarice. You shall see yourself, Virginia Gaunt, as you really are! Your outward beauty, upon which you trade, as your mother traded, is nothing to me but a whip, reminding me of the fool I was in my youth. I saw you first, using your lure, casting your net, hoping to secure young Rosenberg as your escape from poverty and debt. You nearly succeeded; you would have succeeded had not your friend belonged to a race which likes to have its money's-worth. You blush--yes, that shows the truth of my surmise. He would doubtless have been a more congenial solution of your problem than I; but he, alas, was not available! So you took me! And so you were very careful about the settlements! But there were things for which you forgot to stipulate--and those you must learn to do without!" She was white now. Only her force of will kept her upon her feet. The insulting words stormed at her brain, and filled her with despair. "You say this to me--_to your wife_. Is it fair, do you think?... I have not deceived you. You never asked me to give you love. I mean to keep my promises, without the goad of threats.... If--if I did wrong, in accepting what you offered, I am sorry. I want to do my duty, if you will help me ... but don't make it too--difficult." "Excellent!" he commented. "A picture of wifely submission! We shall make something of you yet--perhaps in time. Meanwhile, it is as well to warn you that yours is to be no life of luxury. You must work, my girl--work, do you hear?" "That will be nothing new," she replied tremulously. "I am used to hard work." He laughed out. She looked like a creature whom the weariness of toil had never touched. He was so convinced of her idleness and frivolity that he could see nothing else. "Work? You look like it. Your mother looks like it too. She fluttered into her Dover Street Club, clad like Solomon in all his glory, and with no more concern about the cost of her finery than the lilies of the field. The only work that women like you understand is how to spend money. That's your vocation, the business of your life! How to catch some man and wring from him the means to indulge your desires."