"You've made up your mind to marry this man, honey?"

"I certainly have," was the emphatic answer.

Jane paused.

"And all in seven days?"

"Seven days or seven years--what does it matter? He's my mate--we love--it's Fate."

"It's incredible!"

"What's incredible?"

"Such madness."

"Perhaps love is madness--the madness that makes life worth the candle.

I've never lived before the past week."

"And you, the dainty, cultured, pious little saint, will marry this--this----"

"Say it! I want you to be frank----"

"Perfectly frank?"

"Absolutely."

"This coarse, ugly, illiterate brute----"

"Jane Anderson, how dare you!" Mary sprang to her feet, livid with rage.

"I asked if I might be frank. Shall I lie to you? Or shall I tell you what I think?"

"Say what you please; it doesn't matter," Mary interrupted angrily.

"I only speak at all because I love you. Your common-sense should tell you that I speak with reluctance. But now that I have spoken, let me beg of you for your father's sake, for your dead mother's sake, for my sake--I'm your one disinterested friend and you know that my love is real--for the sake of your own soul's salvation in this world and the next--don't marry that brute! Commit suicide if you will--jump off the bridge--take poison, cut your throat, blow your brains out--but, oh dear God, not this!"

"And why, may I ask?" was the cold question.

"He's in no way your equal in culture, in character, in any of the essentials on which the companionship of marriage must be based----"

"He's a diamond in the rough," Mary staunchly asserted.

"He's in the rough, all right! The only diamond about him is the one in his red scarf--'Take it from me, Kiddo! Take it from me!'"

Her last sentence was a quotation from Jim, her imitation of his slang so perfect Mary's cheeks flamed anew with anger.

"I'll teach him to use good English--never fear. In a month he'll forget his slang and his red scarf."

"You mean that in a month you'll forget to use good English and his style of dress will be yours. Oh, honey, can't you see that such a man will only drag you down, down to his level? Can it be possible that you--that you really love him?"

"I adore him and I'm proud of his love!"

"Now listen! You believe in an indissoluble marriage, don't you?"

"Yes----"

"It's the first article of your creed--that marriage is a holy sacrament, that no power on earth or in hell can ever dissolve its bonds? Fools rush in where angels fear to tread, my dear! They always have--they always will, I suppose. This is peculiarly true of your type of woman--the dainty, clinging girl of religious enthusiasm. You're peculiarly susceptible to the physical power of a brutal lover. Your soul glories in submission to this force. The more coarse and brutal its attraction the more abject and joyful the surrender. Your religion can't save you because your religion is purely emotional--it is only another manifestation of your sex emotions."

"How can you be so sacrilegious!" the girl interrupted with a look of horror.

"It may shock you, dear, but I'm telling you one of the simplest truths of Nature. You'd as well know it now as later. The moment you wake to realize that your emotions have been deceived and bankrupted, your faith will collapse. At least keep, your grip on common-sense. Down in the cowardly soul of every weak woman--perhaps of every woman--is the insane desire to be dominated by a superior brute force. The woman of the lower classes--the peasant of Russia, for example, whose sex impulses are of all races the most violent--refuses with scorn the advances of the man who will not strike her. The man who can't beat his wife is beneath contempt--he is no man at all----"

Mary broke into a laugh.

"Really, Jane, you cease to be serious you're a joke. For Heaven's sake use a little common-sense yourself. You can't be warning me that my lover is marrying me in order to use his fists on me?"

"Perhaps not, dear,"--the artist smiled; "there might be greater depths for one of your training and character. I'm just telling you the plain truth about the haste with which you're rushing into this marriage.

There's nothing divine in it. There's no true romance of lofty sentiment. It's the simplest and most elemental of all the brutal facts of animal life. That it is resistless in a woman of your culture and refinement makes it all the more pathetic----"

The girl rose with a gesture of impatience.

"It's no use, Jane dear; we speak a different language. I don't in the least know what you're talking about, and what's more, I'm glad I don't.

I've a vague idea that your drift is indecent. But we're different. I realize that. I don't sit in judgment on you. You're wasting your breath on me. I'm going into this marriage with my eyes wide open. It's the fulfillment of my brightest hopes and aspirations. That I shall be happy with this man and make him supremely happy I know by an intuition deeper and truer than reason. I'm going to trust that intuition without reservation."

"All right, honey," the artist agreed with a smile. "I won't say anything more, except that you're fooling yourself about the depth of this intuitive knowledge. Your infatuation is not based on the verdict of your deepest and truest instincts."

"On what, then?"

"The crazy ideals of the novels you've been reading--that's all."

"Ridiculous!"

"You're absolutely sure, for instance, that God made just one man the mate of one woman, aren't you?"

"As sure as that I live."

"Where did you learn it?"

"So long ago I can't remember."

"Not in your Bible?"

"No."

"The Sunday school?"

"No."

"Craddock didn't tell you that, did he?"