'Oh mistress mine, where are you roaming? Oh stay and hear! your true love's coming!' She sang the two lines in a deliciously entrancing voice, full of youth and tenderness. With one quick stride he advanced upon her and caught her by the shoulders. "My God, I could shake the life out of you!" he said, fiercely--"I wonder you are not afraid of me!" She laughed, careless of his grasp. "Why should I be? You couldn't kill me if you tried--and if you could--" "If I could--ah, if I could!" he muttered, fiercely. "Why then there would be another murderer added to the general world of murderers!" she said--"That's all! It's not worth it!" Still he held her in his grip. "See here!" he said--"Before you go I want yon to know a thing or two,--you may as well learn once for all my views on women. They're brief, but they're fixed. And they're straight! Women are nothing--just necessary for the continuation of the race--no more. They may be beautiful or homely--it's all one--they serve the same purpose. I'm under no delusions about them. Without men they are utterly useless,--mere waste on the wind! To idealise them is a stupid mistake. To think that they can do anything original, intellectual or imaginative is to set one's self down an idiot. YOU,--you the spoilt only child of one of the biggest rascal financiers in New York,--YOU, left alone in the world with a fortune so vast as to be almost criminal--you think you are something superlative in the way of women,--you play the Cleopatra,--you are convinced you can draw men after you--but it's your money that draws them,--not YOU! Can't you see that?--or are you too vain to see it? And you've no mercy on them,--you make them believe you care for them and then you throw them over like empty nutshells! That's your way! But you never fooled ME,--and you never will!" He released her as suddenly as he had grasped her,--she drew her white draperies round her shoulders with a statuesque grace, and lifted her head, smiling.