You know. The man
with the beard who first spoke. He has often denounced me as lukewarm;
and then you know words are not as potent as deeds with the
proletarians. One assassination is of more value than all the philosophy
of Tolstoy. And that old wind-bag sat near us and watched us--watched
me. That's why I let myself go--" she was blushing now, and old
Koschinsky nearly dropped a bird-cage in his astonishment.
"Yetta, Yetta!" Arthur insisted, "wind-bag, you call your comrade? Were
you not, just for a few minutes, in the same category? Again she was
silent.
"I feel now," he ejaculated, as he came very close to her, "that we must
get outside of these verbal entanglements. I want you to become my
wife." His heart sank as he thought of his mother's impassive, high-bred
air--with such a figure for a Fifth Avenue bride! The girl looked into
his weak blue eyes with their area of saucer-like whiteness. She shook
her stubborn head.
"I shall never marry. I do not believe in such an institution. It
degrades women, makes tyrants of men. No, Arthur--I am fond of you,
perhaps--" she paused,--"so fond that I might enter into any relation
but marriage,--that never!"
"And I tell you, Yetta, anarchy or no anarchy, I could never respect the
woman if she were not mine legally.
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