"What do you mean?" he said roughly, and advancing he took her by the shoulders without her recoiling. "You want to be another Gunther," she said, meeting his glance with an intensity of ambition greater than his, "and you wish to fight like a guerrilla. You think you need no one, and you need admiration, confidence, to be spurred on, flattered, cajoled, made to feel your greatness, to have it dinned into your ears day and night, to be surrounded by it. You have the vanity of a god and you don’t know how to feed it." "Well, what would you do?" he said, still holding her from him. "I would make you what you should be: a personage—not a wanderer," she said with extraordinary energy. "I’d make your home a court; I’d show you what it meant to step into your box at the opera and have the feeling that every eye in the house turned to you. You want to do great things—but you want to feel that you have done great things, that others are impressed by them, envy and look up to you. You want that stimulus and there is only one way to get it. Take your place in society, where you belong among the great figures." "I find my own stimulus," he said, looking at her. "Listen, John Slade," she said furiously. "You think because you have always done what you want with women that that will continue. It won’t. You are at a dangerous age. You have depended upon women; you cannot shake it off. The day will come when you’ll be caught as every man is who plays beyond his youth and strength. Women will either hinder you or push you on. Make up your mind now. Which do you want?" "I want you!" he said, suddenly caught by her words that came as an answer to his new view of himself; and violently, characteristically, he added, enfolding her: "And when I want a thing, I want it now! Get your wraps on. We’re going over to Jersey now and get married." "No, no," she said firmly though her heart was beating so that she thought he must hear it. "You’ve got me. I never expected it, but I’ve got to have you," he said and brutally, without thinking whether he hurt her or not, he forced her head up to his. She did not resist, intoxicated, carried away by her absolute helplessness in his arms. Then, confident, he renewed his demand that they should be married that night, at once. "No, no," she said, disengaging herself, and though all her natural being responded to his demand, her intellectual self conquered, knowing full well that beyond winning him, she must always maintain over him a certain moral superiority. "No. To do what I want to do, we must not give any one the slightest occasion to talk. Such an act as this would be suicidal." "When then?" he said furiously. "Announce our engagement tomorrow," she said, "and in a week we can be married very quietly." "A week!" he cried indignantly. "Or less," she said, smiling; "and now you must go." "You haven’t said, ’I love you,’" he said with a last flash of antagonistic suspicion.