I like still to remember that she did not smile at this idiotic apostrophe. Every man, I suppose, says a thing like that once,--if he can. We rose at once. We walked all the way back in silence. I did not go in, but handed her up the steps and left her without good-night. On the next day but one a note came. Would I meet her for tea at the same place? She was prompt and purposeful. She waited until tea was served, then put it aside, and spoke. “Why do all men, though by different ways, come to the same place?” “I know nothing about all men,” I said. “It’s enough to know about myself. I’m not very sure of that.” “They all do,” she said, reflectively. “But I want to marry you,” I said, with emphasis on the personal pronoun. “Yes; ... that, too,” she said, with a saturated air. “Oh, weary Olympia!” I said. “How stands the score? How many loves lie beheaded in your chamber of horrors? Or do you bury them decently and tend their graves?” “You try me,” she said, with no change of voice or color. “It is very stupid.... Man takes without leave the smallest thing and presumes upon that to erect preposterous claims. Take our case. I begin by liking you. I invite you to a friendship. You are free to accept or decline. You accept. Wherein so far have you acquired rights in me? We find this relation agreeable and extend it. All of this is voluntary. Nothing is surrendered under compulsion. We are both free. Then suddenly you overwhelm me by a sensuous impulse. It is a wanton, ravishing act. I resent it by the only peaceable means in my power. That is, I avoid you. Immediately you assail me with violent reproaches, as by a right. Is it the invader’s right of might? Is human relationship a state of war?... Don’t interrupt me, please.... And now, when I have come to say that under certain conditions I am prepared to make an exception in your forgiveness,--for Heaven knows what reason!--you taunt me of things you have no right to mention. They are mine alone.” There was a retort, but I withheld it. How shall man tell woman she hath provoked him to it? If he tell her she will wither him. Yet if the sight, smell and sound of her provoke him not, then is she mortally offended. He shall see without looking and be damned if he looks without seeing. It is so. But she divined my thoughts. “If a woman gives it is quite the same,” she went on. “Only worse, for in that case he presumes upon what he has received by favor to become lord of all that she has.” “I lie in the dust,” I said. “I know the pose,” she said, with a lighter touch. “Happily it is absurd. If it were not that it would be contemptible.” “Well, pitiless woman, what would you have a man to be and do? Let us suppose provisionally that I ask out of deep, religious curiosity. I may not like the part. How should a man behave with you?”