“My dear friend,” she said lightly, “you really have a very excellent opinion of yourself--excuse me for saying so! ‘My own passion!’ Do you actually suppose I have a ‘passion’ for you?” And rising from her chair, she drew up her slim supple figure to its full height and looked at him with an amused and airy scorn. “You are totally mistaken! No one man living can move me to love; I know all men too well! Their natures are uniformly composed of the same mixture of cruelty, lust and selfishness; and forever and forever, through all the ages of the world, they use the greater part of their intellectual abilities in devising new ways to condone and conceal their vices. You call me ‘temptress’;--why? The temptation, if any there be, emanates from yourself and your own unbridled desires; I do nothing. I am made as I am made; if my face or my form seems fair in your eyes, this is not my fault. Your glance lights on me, as the hawk’s lights on coveted prey; but think you the prey loves the hawk in response? It is the mistake all men make with all women,--to judge them always as being of the same base material as themselves. Some women there are who shame their womanhood; but the majority, as a rule, preserve their self-respect till taught by men to lose it.” Gervase sprang up and faced her, his eyes flashing dangerously. “Do not make any pretence with me!” he said half angrily. “Never tell me you cannot love! …” “I _have_ loved!” she interrupted him. “As true women love,--once, and only once. It suffices; not for one lifetime, but many. I loved; and gave myself ungrudgingly and trustingly to the man my soul worshipped. I was betrayed, of course!--it is the usual story--quite old, quite commonplace! I can tell it to you without so much as a blush of pain! Since then I have not loved,--I have _hated_; and I live but for one thing--Revenge.” Her face paled as she spoke, and a something vague, dark, spectral and terrible seemed to enfold her like a cloud where she stood. Anon she smiled sweetly, and with a bewitching provocativeness. “Your ‘passion,’ you see, my friend, awakens rather a singular ‘reflex’ in me!--not quite of the nature you imagined!” He remained for a moment inert; then, with an almost savage boldness, threw his arm about her. “Have everything your own way, Ziska!” he said in quick, fierce accents. “I will accept all your fancies, and humor all your caprices. I will grant that you do not love me--I will even suppose that I am repellent to you,--but that shall make no difference to my desire! You shall be mine!--willing or unwilling! If every kiss I take from your lips be torn from you with reluctance, yet those kisses I will have!--you shall not escape me! You--you, out of all women in the world, I choose …” “As your wife?” said Ziska slowly, her dark eyes gleaming with a strange light as she dexterously withdrew herself from his embrace. He uttered an impatient exclamation.