"But I don't want to do any good to my fellow creatures. I don't care about my fellow creatures, and I don't even admit that they are my fellow creatures, those men and those women too that one sees about. Why should the common possession of two legs make us fellow creatures with every man, more than with every bird? No, I don't love the human race at all." "This is nonsense, Minola; you won't believe a word of it," the little poetess eagerly said, divided between admiration and alarm. "You good, little, innocent dear, is it not perfectly true? What did I ever do for you, let me ask? There, Miss Grey, you see as kind an elder sister as ever lived. I remember her a perfect mother to me. I dare say I should have been dead thirty years ago but for her, though whether I ought to thank her for keeping me alive is another thing. Anyhow, what was my way of showing my gratitude? As soon as I could shake myself free, I rambled about the world, a very vagrant, and never took any thought of her. We are all the same, Miss Grey, believe me--we men." "I can well believe it," Miss Grey said. "Of course you can. In all our dealings with you women we are just the same. Our sisters and mothers take trouble without end for us, and cry their eyes out for us, and we--what do we care? I am not worse than my neighbors. But if you ask me, do I admire my fellow man, I answer frankly, no. Not I. What should I admire him for?" "One must live for something," the poetess pleaded, much perplexed in her heart as to what Miss Grey's opinion might be about all this. "Of course one must live for art; for music and poetry, and colors and decoration." "And Nature?" Mary Blanchet gently insinuated. "Nature--no! Nature is the buxom sweetheart of ploughboy poets. We only affect to admire Nature because people think we can't be good if we don't. No one really cares about great cauliflower suns, and startling contrasts of blazing purple and emerald green. There is nothing really beautiful in Nature except her decay; her rank weeds, and dank grasses, and funereal evening glooms." While he talked this way he was seated on the piano stool, with his face turned away from the piano, on whose keys he touched every now and then with a light and seemingly careless hand, bringing out only a faint note that seemed to help the conversation rather than to interrupt it. He was very handsome, Minola could not help thinking, and there was something in his colorless face and deep eyes that seemed congenial with the talk of glooms and decay. Still, true to her first feeling toward all men, Minola was disposed to dislike him, the more especially as he spoke with an air of easy superiority, as one who would imply that he knew how to maintain his place above women in creation.