"Of the subject that interests
you not at all."
She looked at me in a forlorn sort of way that softened my irritation with
sympathy. "I've told you how it is with me," she said. "I do my best to
please you. I--"
"Damn your best!" I cried. "Don't try to please _me_. Be yourself. I'm
no slave-driver. I don't have to be conciliated. Can't you ever see that
I'm not your tyrant? Do I treat you as any other man would feel he had the
right to treat the girl who had engaged herself to him? Do I ever thrust my
feelings or wishes--or--longings on you? And do you think repression easy
for a man of my temperament?"
"You have been very good," she said humbly.
"Don't you ever say that to me again," I half commanded, half pleaded. "I
won't have you always putting me in the position of a kind and indulgent
master."
She halted and faced me.
"Why do you want me, anyhow?" she cried. Then she noticed several loungers
on a bench staring at us and grinning; she flushed and walked on.
"I don't know," said I. "Because I'm a fool, probably. My common sense
tells me I can't hope to break through that shell of self-complacence
you've been cased in by your family and your associates. Sometimes I think
I'm mistaken in you, think there isn't any real, human blood left in your
veins, that you're like the rest of them--a human body whose heart and mind
have been taken out and a machine substituted--a machine that can say and
do only a narrow little range of conventional things--like one of those
French dolls.
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