“What do you care about him!” burst out Rita, almost incoherent in her fright and anger.  “He’s a man; he can take care of himself.  Don’t think of him.  It isn’t your business to consider him.  If he wants to marry you it’s his concern after all.  Let him do it!  Marry him and let him fight it out with his friends!  After all what does a man give a girl that compares with what she gives him?  Men—­men—­” she stammered—­“they’re all alike in the depths of their own hearts.  We are incidents to them—­no matter how they say they love us.  They can’t love as we do.  They’re not made for it!  We are part of the game to them; they are the whole game to us; we are, at best, an important episode in their careers; they are our whole careers.  Oh, Valerie!  Valerie! listen to me, child!  That man could go on living and painting and eating and drinking and sleeping and getting up to dress and going to bed to sleep, if you lay dead in your grave.  But if you loved him, and were his wife—­or God forgive me!—­his mistress, the day he died you would die, though your body might live on.  I know—­I know, Valerie.  Death—­whether it be his body or his love, ends all for the woman who really loves him.  Woman’s loss is eternal.  But man’s loss is only temporary—­he is made that way, fashioned so.  Now I tell you the exchange is not fair—­it has never been fair—­never will be, never can be.  And I warn you not to give this man the freshness of your youth, the happy years of your life, your innocence, the devotion which he will transmute into passion with his accursed magic!  I warn you not to forsake the tranquillity of ignorance, the blessed immunity from that devil’s paradise that you are already gazing into—­”

“Rita!  Rita!  What are you saying?”

“I scarcely know, child.  I am trying to save you from lifelong unhappiness—­trying to tell you that—­that men are not worth it—­”

“How do you know?”

There was a silence, then Rita, very pale and quiet, leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees and framing her face with her hands.

“I had my lesson,” she said.

“You!  Oh, my darling—­forgive me!  I did not know—­”

Rita suffered herself to be drawn into the younger girl’s impulsive embrace; they both cried a little, arms around each other, faltering out question and answer in unsteady whispers: 

“Were you married, dearest?”

“No.”

“Oh—­I am so sorry, dear—­”

“So am I....  Do you blame me for thinking about men as I do think?”

“Didn’t you love—­him?”

“I thought I did....  I was too young to know....  It doesn’t matter now—­”

“No, no, of course not.  You made a ghastly mistake, but it’s no more shame to you than it is to him.  Besides, you thought you loved him.”

“He could have made me.  I was young enough....  But he let me see how absolutely wicked he was....  And then it was too late to ever love him.”