"You have much talk"--she said--"and no doubt you are clever. But I think you are all wrong!" "You do? Wise child! Now listen to my much talk a little longer! Have you ever watched silkworms? No? They are typical examples of humanity. A silkworm, while it is a worm, feeds to repletion,--you can never get it as many mulberry leaves as it would like to eat--then when it is gorged, it builds itself a beautiful house of silk (which is taken away from it in due course) and comes out at the door in wings!--wings it hardly uses and seems not to understand--then, if it is a female moth, it looks about for 'love' from the male. If the male 'loves' it, the female produces a considerable number of eggs like pin-heads--and then?--what then? Why she promptly dies, and there's an end of her! Her sole aim and end of being was to produce eggs, which in their turn become worms and repeat the same dull routine of business. Now--think me as brutal as you like--I say a woman is very like a female silkworm,--she comes out of her beautiful silken cocoon of maidenhood with wings which she doesn't know how to use--she merely flutters about waiting to be 'loved'--and when this dream she calls 'love' comes to her, she doesn't dream any longer--she wakes--to find her life finished!--finished, Manella!--dry as a gourd with all the juice run out!" Manella rose from her seat beside him. The warm light in her eyes had gone--her face was pale, and as she drew herself up to her stately height she made a picture of noble scorn. "I am sorry for you!" she said. "If you think these things your thoughts are quite dreadful! You are a cruel man after all! I am sorry I spoke of the beautiful little lady who came here to see you--you do not love her--you cannot!--I felt sure you did--but I am wrong!--there is no love in you except for yourself and your own will!" She spoke, breathing quickly, and trembling with suppressed emotion. He smiled,--and, rising, saluted her with a profound bow. "Thank you, Manella! You give me a true character!--Myself and my own will are certainly the chief factors in my life--and they may work wonders yet!--who knows! And there is no love in me--no!--not what YOU call love!--but--as concerns the 'beautiful little lady,' you may know this much of me--THAT _I_ WANT HER!" He threw out his hands with a gesture that was almost tragic, and such an expression came into his face of savagery and tenderness commingled that Manella retreated from him in vague terror. "I want her!" he repeated--"And why? Not to 'love' her,--but to break her wings,--for she, unlike a silkworm moth, knows how to use them! I want her, to make her proud mind bend to MY will and way!--I want her to show her how a man can, shall, and MUST be master of a woman's brain and soul!" A sudden heat of pent-up feeling broke out in this impulsive rush of words;--he checked himself,--and seeing Manella's pale, scared face he went up to her and took her hand.