She looked at me in a forlorn sort of way that softened my irritation with sympathy. “I've told you how it is with me,” she said. “I do my best to please you. I--” “Damn your best!” I cried. “Don't try to please _me_. Be yourself. I'm no slave-driver. I don't have to be conciliated. Can't you ever see that I'm not your tyrant? Do I treat you as any other man would feel he had the right to treat the girl who had engaged herself to him? Do I ever thrust my feelings or wishes--or--longings on you? And do you think repression easy for a man of my temperament?” “You have been very good,” she said humbly. “Don't you ever say that to me again,” I half commanded, half pleaded. “I won't have you always putting me in the position of a kind and indulgent master.” She halted and faced me. “Why do you want me, anyhow?” she cried. Then she noticed several loungers on a bench staring at us and grinning; she flushed and walked on. “I don't know,” said I. “Because I'm a fool, probably. My common sense tells me I can't hope to break through that shell of self-complacence you've been cased in by your family and your associates. Sometimes I think I'm mistaken in you, think there isn't any real, human blood left in your veins, that you're like the rest of them--a human body whose heart and mind have been taken out and a machine substituted--a machine that can say and do only a narrow little range of conventional things--like one of those French dolls.” “You mustn't blame me for that,” she said gently. “I realize it, too--and I'm ashamed of it. But--if you could know how I've been educated. They've treated me as the Flathead Indian women treat their babies--keep their skulls in a press--isn't that it?--until their heads and brains grow of the Flathead pattern. Only, somehow, in my case--the process wasn't quite complete. And so, instead of being contented like the other Flathead girls, I'm--almost a rebel, at times. I'm neither the one thing nor the other--not natural and not Flathead, not enough natural to grow away from Flathead, not enough Flathead to get rid of the natural.” “I take back what I said about not knowing why I--I want you, Anita,” I said. “I do know why--and--well, as I told you before, you'll never regret marrying me.”