She shrank, sprang up.His baffled hands had not even touched her.``David Hull!'' she cried, and the indignation and the repulsion in her tone and in her manner were not simulated, though her artfulness hastened to make real use of them.She loved to rouse men to frenzy.She knew that the sight of their frenzy would chill her--would fill her with an emotion that would enable her to remain mistress of the situation.
At sight of her aversion his eyes sank.``Forgive me,'' he muttered.``You make me--CRAZY.''
``I!'' she cried, laughing in angry derision.``What have I ever done to encourage you to be--impertinent?''
``Nothing,'' he admitted.``That is, nothing but just being yourself.''
``I can't help that, can I?''
``No,'' said he, adding doggedly: ``But neither can men help going crazy about you.''
She looked at him sitting there at once penitent and impenitent;and her mind went back to the thoughts that had engaged it before he came into view.Marriage-- to marry one of these men, with their coarse physical ideas of women, with their pitiful weakness before an emotion that seemed to her to have no charm whatever.
And these were the creatures who ruled the world and compelled women to be their playthings and mere appendages! Well--no doubt it was the women's own fault, for were they not a poor, spiritless lot, trembling with fright lest they should not find a man to lean on and then, having found the man, settling down into fat and stupid vacuity or playing the cat at the silly game of social position? But not Jane Hastings! Her bosom heaved and her eyes blazed scorn as she looked at this person who had dared think the touch of his coarse hands would be welcome.Welcome!
``And I have been thinking what a delightful friendship ours was,'' said she, disgustedly.``And all the time, your talk about your ambition--the speeches you were going to make--the offices you were going to hold-- the good you were going to do in purifying politics-- it was all a blind!''