"If you had never known New York, you might be different," he continued triumphantly. "You might marry and be satisfied with a commonplace routine existence. But, little girl, you're what you are! You covet everything: jewels--oh, I saw your eyes when you refused that necklace; clothes--you know your own worth and you've dreamed, you must have dreamed, of what you'd be if you could wear what other women wear; you want to go where others go, pay what others pay; you want to be watched, courted, admired. Do you think you'll ever love any man as you love yourself?" "It isn't true!" she said furiously; yet his exposition had left her weakly terrified. "It is true! You know it! Stand up; look in the mirror! See yourself as you can be, with jewels in your hair, against your neck, in dresses that are worth hundreds, in furs that are worth thousands! Do you think you could go in any assembly, theater or restaurant, but every one wouldn't turn in amazement?" She felt troubled, struggling against a heavy lassitude, regretting that she had given him this opportunity; and instinctively, by a force beyond her control, she raised her eyes to the mirror at the end of the room, and saw a little girl in a simple dress, her hair in a confusion of golden curls, and behind her the triumphant woman he had conjured to her eyes. "No coffee!" she said, nervously averting her eyes from his eager gaze. "It's hot, dreadfully hot, in here." There came a moment's pause, a lull after the first skirmish, during which he lighted a cigar and waited, well content. "It's all a question of opportunity," he began again, while her troubled eyes went past him to the mirror of the future. "You can do now what you can't do later! Do you want to end in a boarding-house, Miss Baxter?" "Why do you--care for me?" she asked him abruptly. "In the beginning, because you resisted me," he said, turning his cigar in his fingers. "Now, because you hate me!" "And knowing that I hate you, you want me?" "A thousand times more!" he said, and for the first time the greed and hunger rose in his eyes. But quickly he controlled himself. "The moment I stopped resisting you, you would not care!" she said slowly. "True; but you would always resist!" he said quickly. "Besides, that is what I like--what you must always do!" He spoke now with eagerness, a restlessness in his voice, uneasiness in his eyes. Despite the tenseness of the situation, looking on him thus, a flash of pity and horror came to her as she felt, in her progress into the knowledge of life, the hidden tragedies that lurk in the reverse of a glittering medal. "You overestimate what I can do!" she said at last. "What are you afraid of?" he asked her, ignoring the remark. "The opinion of society?" She did not answer. "Go on with your career!" he said impatiently. "The world will close its eyes to what you do! If you haven't the courage, there's always a way. Marry and separate!"