"If a girl as pretty and intelligent as you are," he continued, "should fall in love with me, I believe I should die with joy; for a girl like you could find in her heart a love worth having. I don't know what I should do under such circumstances, for I have had no experience; but I imagine I should be very enthusiastic, and express my enthusiasm in some absurd way. No one ever loved me, that I can remember; for as a child I do not believe I was welcome to the food I ate, though I was not more troublesome than other children who receive so much attention that they care nothing for it. I have been indignant at men for beating their dogs, and then envied the love the brutes displayed while the smart was yet on their bodies. It has so chanced that the dogs I have owned were well treated and ungrateful, and finally followed off some of the vagrants who were hard masters. I have thought that they despised me because they were fat and idle, believing these conditions to be uncomfortable, having never experienced poverty and hard treatment; but certainly they regarded me with indifference and suspicion. But I didn't try to force them to admire me; I rather kept out of their way; for an animal cannot be driven to love his master, and you cannot force or persuade a man to admire any one he dislikes." "It is possible that you only imagine it," the girl said. "Such doubts as you express have often come to me, but I have comforted myself with the poor reflection that there is so little love in the world that when it is divided among the people, it does not amount to as much as they wish. I know nothing of your situation, past or present, but is it not possible that everyone has the same complaint that you have?"