Page:The One Woman (1903).pdf/57

 delusion that ever bewildered the mind of poet or sentimentalist."

Gordon grunted.

"It's funny how you have the faculty of putting the opposition in terms of its last absurdity."

"Grunt if you like; I'm in dead earnest. You want to put on the brakes. You've struck the down grade. Socialism takes the temper out of the steel fiber of character. It makes a man flabby. It is the earmark of racial degeneracy. The man of letters who is poisoned by it never writes another line worth reading; the preacher who tampers with it ends a materialist or atheist; the philanthropist bitten by it, from just a plain fool, develops a madman; while the home-builder turns free-lover and rake under its teachings."

"You're a beauty to grieve over the loss to the world of home-builders!" Gordon cried, with scorn.

"Maybe my grief is a little strained—but really, Frank, I hate women, not because I don't feel the need of their love"

He drew the muscles of his big mouth together and looked thoughtfully out of the window with his single piercing eye.

"No; for the first time on that point I'll make an honest, clean confession to you. I hate women because I'm afraid of them. I have a face that can stop an eight-day clock if I look at it hard enough; and yet beneath this hideous mask there's a poor coward's soul that worships beauty and hungers for