"You can't help being yourself. You can't help being a very desirable
creature so far as I am concerned. You have made me want you. You
didn't intend to; you didn't try to. You were so made, that is all. And
I was so made that I was ripe to want you. But I can't help being
myself. I can't by an effort of will cease from wanting you, any more
than you by an effort of will can make yourself undesirable to me."
"Oh, this desire! this want! want! want!" she broke in rebelliously. "I
am not quite a fool. I understand some things. And the whole thing is
so foolish and absurd--and uncomfortable. I wish I could get away from
it. I really think it would be a good idea for me to marry Noa Noah, or
Adamu Adam, or Lalaperu there, or any black boy. Then I could give him
orders, and keep him penned away from me; and men like you would leave me
alone, and not talk marriage and 'I want, I want.'"
Sheldon laughed in spite of himself, and far from any genuine impulse to
laugh.
"You are positively soulless," he said savagely.
"Because I've a soul that doesn't yearn for a man for master?" she took
up the gage. "Very well, then. I am soulless, and what are you going to
do about it?"
"I am going to ask you why you look like a woman? Why have you the form
of a woman? the lips of a woman? the wonderful hair of a woman? And I am
going to answer: because you are a woman--though the woman in you is
asleep--and that some day the woman will wake up.
Pages:
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230