They took their supper in a near-by oyster house, invaded by a chattering throng, drummed over by an indefatigable orchestra. She had looked forward keenly to the tÊte-À-tÊte. She was terribly disillusioned. It was not at all exciting. Conversation was impossible, and what they said was meaningless. She became irritable and restless, for she had a feeling that she was being defrauded—that this man was not like the rest, that he was one worth knowing, drawing out, an adversary who would compel her to utilize all the light volatile artillery of her audacious imagination.

"Listen," she broke out suddenly, "this is a horrible failure. I really want to talk to you! Have you seen enough of the rehearsal?"

"Plenty!"

"Let's cut it, then!"

"Madame Quichy would never forgive me!"

She was silent a moment, rebuffed.

"I'm out of sorts. You can at least take me home!"

"Certainly!"

Arrived at the house, she said reluctantly:

"Well, come in for just a moment!"

And the parlor being occupied, they went to her room.

"Is Your Honor really going to spare me ten minutes from the fascinating Sada Quichy?" she said, pouting, once arrived.

"Ten hours, if you like!" he said, taking off his coat with a gesture of finality.

She was so delighted at this unhoped-for treason that she clapped her hands like a child, not perceiving how he had made her ask each time for what he really wanted.

"You're really going to stay?"

"Yes, indeed!"

"How exciting!"

She let her coat slip into his hands, and going to the mirror, raised her hat slowly from her rebellious golden curls with one of those indescribable, intimate, feminine gestures that have such allurement to the gaze of men. If, with Blainey, she had resorted to abrupt and dashing ways, with Massingale she felt herself wholly feminine, sure that each turn of her head, line of her body, or caressing movement of her arms would find appreciation.

She looked at him a moment over her shoulder, arching her eyebrows with eyes that seemed brimming with caprice.

"You know, I was quite determined you should come!" she said, laughing, and with a sudden swift passage of the room, she darted on the sofa, curling her legs under her, hugging her knees, and resting her little chin on them in elfish amusement. "Honor bright! Made up my mind there in the theater!"

"So did I!" he said frankly.

"Really? And Sada Quichy?"

"She is a known quantity! It's much more amusing gambling with possibilities!"

Since taking her coat he had remained standing, examining the room with a keen instinct for significant details.

"Two beds?"

"This is Snyder's," she said, patting it. "She's rehearsing. Won't be home till late."

Without asking her permission, he moved about curiously, smiling at the trunks which stood open, and the bureaus with their gaping drawers.

"Heavens! everything is in an awful mess!" she said, with a little ejaculation.

"Don't change it. I like it! It looks real!" he said, continuing.

She allowed him to pry into corners, watching him from the soft depths of the couch, a little languid from the varied emotions of the day, longing to be rid of the stiff pumps and the fatigue of her day dress. The different dramatizations she had indulged in with Peavey, Sassoon and Blainey had aroused her craving for sudden transpositions. If only this should not prove disappointing! She felt an exhilarated curiosity, more stirred than ever before. Did he really know her, divine her, as she believed? How would he act? Was he only mentally curious, or was that a clever mask for a more personal interest? She had a feeling that she had known him for years, that all they could say had been said again and again.

He was young at forty-five, and yet already gray. She liked that. Youth and gray hair, she thought, were distinguished in a judge. There was an air of authority about him that imposed on her. He did not ask permission for what he did, and yet it carried no offense. He was dressed perfectly, and that counted for much with her—so perfectly that she did not even notice what he wore, except that the tones were soft and gave her a sensation of pleasure, and that the cut was irreproachable.

All the accent lay about the eyes and the fine moldings of the forehead. The eyes were deep, hidden under the brows, Bismarckian in their set, and not so calm, after all, she thought. She found herself studying the lines of his mouth, strong and yet susceptible. And as she studied the characteristic mockery of his smile, that smile which gave him the appearance of one who projects above the crowd and sees beyond the serried heads, it did not seem so much the man himself as an attitude carefully assumed against the world. Was there a drama back of it all? At any rate, her curiosity awaking her zest, she began to wonder what he would be like in anger—that is, if anything could move him to anger, or to anything else! This last provocative thought aroused the danger-defying little devil within her. The languor vanished; she felt swiftly, aggressively alert.

"And this is where we say our prayers," he said, pointing to the white bed.

"Every night!" she answered promptly.

"Really?" he said, raising his eyebrows.

"Every night," she repeated, "I throw myself on my knees and cry, all in a breath:

"'O Lord! give me everything I want!' Then I dive into bed, and pull the covers over my head!"

"H'm!" he said, his chin in his hand, looking down at her as she rocked in laughter on the couch. "After all, that's what a prayer is, isn't it?"

"I think so. Oh!"

Suddenly on the floor, tipping from the edge of the couch, her pumps fell with a crash. She had slipped them off surreptitiously, concealing the operation with her skirts. She sprang on the rug in her green stocking feet, snatching up the indiscreet pumps, and retreating to the closet, but without confusion.

"What are you doing now?" she said, bobbing out suddenly.

He was standing by the chrysanthemums, reaching up.

"I was wondering if they were real."

"Imitation?"

"You don't know that trick," he said maliciously. "A great invention of one girl I knew. You ought to know it! She had three vases, chrysanthemums, roses, violets, all imitation. She said they were the only flowers she cared for; so, when orders came in, all the florist did was to telephone the amount he would credit to her account!"

"Was the florist PouffÉ?" asked DorÉ, stopping short and laughing.

"One of them. But the real touch was when the admirer called. She would place the vase of roses, say, on the mantel,—out of reach, naturally,—blow a special perfume in the room, and say:

"'My! how wonderfully fragrant those roses are!'"

DorÉ felt divined; she laughed, conscious of a telltale color.

"Really, Your Honor, you know entirely too much!"

"I adore the little wretches—and their games!" he said frankly. "I'm always on their side!"

"You don't adore anything! You couldn't!"

She had stopped before him, looking up at him with her blue eyes, which were no longer cloudy but sparkling with provocation.

"You read character, too," he answered, smiling impersonally. "It's true—it's safer and more amusing! Let me behind the scenes. I like it—that's all I ask!"

"All?"

"Quite all!" he said dryly. Then: "What are you going to do with Sassoon and Harrigan Blood?"

He asked the question without preparation, to throw her off her guard, but she avoided it by asking another.

"Are you really just looking on?" she said, drawing her eyebrows together. "Only curious?"

"It's as I told you," he said. "You see how I am here. Can't you tell?"

She shook her head.

"I can't tell; I can't tell anything about you!"

"You were not very nice to me at the luncheon!" he said irrelevantly.

"I know it!"

"You would hardly speak to me!"

"No."

"Why?"

"Shall I tell you? Because—because you are too strong for me!" she said solemnly, her eyes growing curiously round and large.

He laughed.

"Now, Miss Mischief, that's too evident!"

"It's true! I felt it from the start," she said simply. "Sit down."

He credited her with being deeper than he had believed, whereas she had only obeyed an impulse.

"Is Blainey a possibility too?" he asked suddenly.

"What! he has guessed even Blainey?" she thought, startled; but, as she began an evasive answer, satisfied, he turned to a trunk, closed it and installed himself, folding his arms.

"I'll tell you what I am going to do with Sassoon and Blood," she said suddenly. She had camped on another trunk, swinging one little foot incased within a red slipper, ten feet of the faded rug between them. "I am going to make—oh, a lot of trouble!"

"You've started it already!"

"Tell me—was there really a terrible row?" she asked, clapping her hands eagerly. "All over little me?"

"H'm, yes—rather! We had some difficulty in stopping it!" He looked at her, amused, with the gaze of one who appreciates the irony of values. "Do you know, you pretty little atom, that you are setting in motion forces that may shake millions?"

"Oh, how lovely! Tell me!"

"Perhaps I'd better not!" he said grimly. "And suppose I told you that if you made Sassoon and Blood enemies over your charming little person, that Blood is capable of turning all the force of his newspapers against the Sassoon interests, making ugly revelations and bringing on a mild panic, would you persist?"

"Certainly I should!" she exclaimed enthusiastically.

"So is history made!" he thought to himself. "Now, answer me honestly."

"Well?"

"Don't you ever feel any temptation—"

"With Sassoon—money?"

He put out his arm in a gesture that swept the room.

"You are satisfied with this?"

"Do you know, that's just what he asked—the very words!"

"Yes; Sassoon would be pretty sure to ask that. And you are never tempted?"

"I thought you knew us!" she said proudly. "You don't—no, you don't understand at all!—or you wouldn't have asked that question!" But, not yet ready to talk, wishing to put a score of questions to him, she changed abruptly: "So, Your Honor, you are just curious about me?"

"I am—very curious!" he said, looking at her with a touch of his magisterial manner. "It's a queer game you are playing!"

"It's such fun!"

"Yes," he said, unbending; "it is fun; but what's going to come of it?"

She flung out her arms.

"Quien sabe!"

"I wonder what is the answer," he said, with a touch of solemnity. "There are so many possible answers!"

"Oh, now, Your Honor," she said, with a pouting look, a little restless, too, under his fixed gaze, "are we to be as serious as all that?"

"You girls are marvelous," he said in a lighter tone, "and you don't even appreciate the wonders you accomplish!"

"Go on! Cross-examine me! It's a new experience!" she said, dropping her hands into her lap resignedly, with mock submission. She felt as though she were playing a great rÔle, and that before an audience which would not respond—which she was determined should respond; and yet, much as she wished to try his composure, she was still groping for the proper tactics.

"Some day will you tell me something?"

"I'm afraid, Your Honor, I'd tell you almost anything! What is it?"

"Where you come from—your home—why you left—"

"The story of my life—right away!"

"I should be interested!"

"My father was shot the week before I was born," she began, composing her features. "Mother was arrested on suspicion; I was born in jail...."

"Wait," he said, with an appreciative nod. "I don't want a romance!"

She laughed with some confusion.

"What a pity! It was such a good start."

"I want the truth—not one of a dozen stories you've made up!"

She eyed the tip of her red slipper, raising it slightly.

"Some day I'll tell you," she said finally. "Next question!"

"Where in the world did you pick up the name?"

"Pick up? What do you mean?"

"The 'DorÉ.' It wasn't your own!"

"Oh, I found it," she said, turning away hastily, as if afraid he might have guessed.

That was one thing she could never tell him, no matter where future confidences might lead her. It had, in truth, been the suggestion of a certain Josh Nebbins, press-agent for a local theater, who had once adored her fatuously—one of those forgotten minor incidents, lost in the impenetrable mists of an outlived beginning, an indiscretion that she wished to forget, an impossible admirer of the days when her taste had not been cultivated.

Luckily, in this moment of her confusion the telephone saved her.

"Shall I close my ears?" he said instantly.

"The idea! Do you think I haven't learned how to telephone?" she said indignantly. "See how much you can gather from it!"

He waited, availing himself of her permission to listen, seeking in vain to patch sense in the guarded replies that came to him:

"I know who it is. Go ahead.... No, not alone—but that makes no difference.... Well, I thought it was time! Engaged to-night!... You saw me?... To-day—this afternoon.... 'Deed I am!... Why not? Lovely!... I'm sorry!... When?... Yes!... Oh, terribly exciting!..."

He smiled, and admitting defeat, continued his examination of the room. Keen amateur of the thousandfold subterranean currents of the city, none interested him more than the adventurous life of the Salamanders, with their extraordinary contrasts of wealth and poverty. He had known them by the dozens, and yet each was a new problem. Was it possible that she could experience no temptation before the opportunities of sudden wealth, so boldly enticing, or did she not realize what such opportunities could mean? The interview interested him hugely. He felt himself master of the situation, enjoying the sudden turns of his intimate knowledge that kept her on the defensive—keen enough to know the advantage, with a woman, of establishing an instant superiority.

"Well?" she said, returning and looking at him with a teasing glance.

"I'll admit that you've learned to telephone," he said appreciatively. "What were you planning—how best to elope?"

"You didn't guess who it was?"

"Sassoon?"

"No; Mr. Harrigan Blood."

"H'm! I should like to have heard—"

The telephone interrupted again, but this time, responding in an assumed voice, she cut it off abruptly, swinging back to her perch on the trunk.

"Ready! Go on with the examination. Well! what are you thinking?"

"I am trying to see the whole scheme," he said, looking at her seriously. "Sassoon, Blood,—twenty others, I understand,—excitement and all that. How long have you been in it?"

"In what?"

"In this maelstrom of New York?"

"Two years, almost!"

"Ah, then there must be a man or two behind the rocks!"

"How funnily you express things," she said, half guessing his meaning. "Just what do you mean?"

He took out his cigarette-case, asked permission with a nod, and lighting a match, said:

"The man behind the rock? Oh, that's obvious! The man you have only to whistle for, the passably acceptable man, safe, eligible, marriageable. The man who will come forward at any time! Every woman understands that. Perhaps there are several rocks, way back in the background? No fibbing, now!"

She laughed, and thinking of Peavey, blushed under his quick gaze.

"Yes, of course."

"More than one?"

"Three or four; but I shall never whistle!"

"That's what makes the game so exhilarating, isn't it?"

"Naturally! There's always a retreat," she said, nodding.

His way of taking her, unexpected and positive, made her forget, at times, the combat intended, in the delight of self-analyzation.

"Your eyes are extraordinary," he said, meeting her glance critically. "They're not eyes; they're blue clouds entangled in your eyelashes."

But even in this there was no personal enthusiasm. He spoke enthusiastically, but as an observer, calculating and foreseeing developments. This compliment infuriated DorÉ. She was not accustomed to having men meet her full glance with nothing but criticism.

"Thank you!" she said icily. "You compliment like an oculist."

"No oculist would understand the value of such eyes," he answered calmly; "De Joncy was right when he said there was a million in each."

"So you overheard?"

"And you—did you understand?"

"Of course!"

She sprang to the floor, and went to the dressing-table on the pretext of seeking a comb.

"I don't like the way you talk to me," she said, with her back to him.

"Why?"

The real reason she could not avow—that she resented this immovable impersonality of his attitude. This man, who saw into her, who divined so much that she believed securely masked, and yet showed no trace of emotion even in his flattery, began to irritate her, as well as to arouse all the dangerous vanities. But, as she could not tell him this, she assumed an indignant manner and said:

"I believe you really think I shall turn into an adventuress!"

"No-o," he said slowly, as if reflecting. "You may come near it—very near it; but it will be a hazard of the imagination. You will end very differently!"

"Ah, yes," she said, suddenly remembering, her irritation yielding to her curiosity, "you were going to prophesy. Well, what's going to happen to me?"

"You will be angry if I tell you," he said, with a whimsical pursing of his lips.

"No! What?"

"You will burn up another year or so; you will come very, very near a good many things; and then you will marry, and turn into a devoted, loyal little Hausfrau—like a million other little Hausfraus who have thought they were in this world to do anything else but marry!"

"No, no! Don't you dare say that!" she said, covering her ears and stamping her foot. "That never!"

"Mark my prophecy," he said, with mock solemnity, delighted at the fury he had aroused.

"No, no! I won't be commonplace!" she cried. "I am in this world to do something unusual, extraordinary. I'm not like every other little woman. Marriage? Never! Three meals a day at the same hours—the same man—domesticity! Horrors!"

"Of course, of course," he said, with his provoking analytic exactness of phrase. "My dear girl, this is not a real life you are indulging in! Some day, perhaps, I'll discuss it more frankly with you. All this is a phase of mild hysteria. Do you know what you are doing? You're not living; you're rejecting life—yes, just that!—with every man you meet. The time comes when you will have to select. The forces of nature you are playing with are bigger than you; they'll conquer you in the end—decide for you! Now you play at fooling men so much that you fool yourself. When you marry, you will surprise yourself!"

"Stop!" she cried furiously. "Marriage! Yes, that's all you men believe we are capable of! But we are different now. We can be free—we can live our own lives! And I will not be commonplace. Nothing can make me that. I'd rather have a tragic love-affair than that! Oh, what's the use of living, if you have to do as every one else does!"

She went to the window at the side, covering the ground with the leap of a panther, working herself to a fury.

"Do you know what this wall is?" she cried, striking the curtain, which rolled up with the report of a pistol—"this ugly, hateful, brutal wall that I hate, loathe, despise? That's matrimony!—ugly, cold, horrid wall!"

She groped with her hand, caught the tassel, and pulled the shade without turning around.

"But, you see, you can't shut it out!" he said maliciously, pointing to the space that showed under the deficient shade.

"There'll be no wall in my life," she said, with a toss of her head. She felt herself in her most effective theatrical mood, and she flung the reins to it, caring nothing where it led her. Now, at all costs, she was resolved to thaw out this glacial reserve of his, rouse him, teach him that she could not be held so cheap. "No wall in my life! No man to tell me: Do this—do that—come here—go there! Sacrifices? I shall never make them! I tell you, all I want is to live—to really live! A short life, but a free one! You think Sassoon tempts me; you think I'd change this room for a palace or a home! You don't understand me! No; not with all you think you understand!"

"Tell me!" he said, transforming himself into an audience.

She changed suddenly from the passion of protest to almost a caressing delight, ready to turn into a hundred shapes to overwhelm him. For this perfect discipline of his rushed her on. She would find under the observer the spark of the savage! Perhaps it was because she had no fear that she played so boldly, recognizing in him the true gentleman, and womanlike, presuming on this knowledge. He continued like a statue. She was not quiet a moment, flitting to and fro near him, dangerously near him, with a hundred coquetries of movement, half-revealing poses, sudden flashes of the eyes, confiding smiles, all tantalizing, insinuating, caressing, tender, provoking, filled with the zest of a naughty child.

"Oh, Your Honor! you're a very, very wise man," she said, shaking her finger at him, "but you have not seized the real point. We want to be free! Yes, we could live where we wanted,—in the finest apartments,—but it is such fun to be in an old boarding-house at ten dollars a week, when you never know how you're going to raise the rent! Ah, the rent! that's a terrible bugbear, I can tell you! You know one trick for doing it. There are a hundred, things you would never guess; for, with all your prying eyes, you are just like the rest—less stupid, not more clever!"

"Tell me some," he said, his eyes half closed as if dazzled by this sudden outpouring of youth and excitement.

"No—no," she said, shaking her hair so merrily that a loosened curl came tumbling over her ear. She changed the mood, coming near to him, laying her hand appealingly on his sleeve. "Ah, don't get wrong ideas. Don't judge us too harshly! We're not mercenary at the bottom; it isn't the money we want—that's very little! It's the fun of playing the game!"

"Precipices?" he suggested, nodding.

"Ah, yes, precipices!" she said, in a sudden ecstasy; and as she said it her eyes drooped, her lips seemed to tremble apart as if giving up her body to a sigh half ecstasy, half languor.

"I can remember when I adored precipices, too," he said, drawing his arm away from her touch and folding it over the other, tightly across his chest.

"Remember!" she said mockingly, snapping her fingers under his nose. "You do now. Who doesn't?" She put a space between them with a sudden bound, as though he had made a move to retain her. Then, with a whirl, she poised herself gleefully on the arm of a chair. "I adore precipices! It's such fun to go dashing along their edges, leaning up against the wind that tries to throw you over, looking way, way down, thousands of miles, and hear the little stones go tumbling down, down—and then to crouch suddenly, spring aside and see a great, stupid, puffy man snatch at the air and go head over heels, kerplunk! You don't understand that feeling?" she said, stopping short.

"I understand that!" he said curtly.

She whirled suddenly on her feet, extending her arms against an imaginary gale, and bending over, her finger on her lips, pretended to gaze into unfathomable depths.

"But you never fall in," he said wisely.

Instantly she straightened up.

"Oh, dear, no! for then, you see, there would be only one precipice, endlessly, forever and ever! No more precipices, no more fun, no more Dodo—and that would be unbearable!"

"And are there many precipices, Dodo?" he said, assuming the privilege.

"Oh, dear, yes—many precipices," she said, watching him maliciously. "There are old precipices, but those aren't interesting! Then, there are new ones, too; oh, yes, several very interesting new ones!"

"Blainey," he said; but she shook her head.

"I'm afraid that's not a precipice," she said seriously. But at once, back in her roguish mood, she continued: "Sassoon's a moderately exciting precipice, only he will look so ridiculous as he goes spinning down, all arms and legs!"

She took a few steps toward the door, and put her hand to her ear.

"And I think there was the beginning of another precipice there to-night; only—oh!" She exaggerated the exclamation with a confidential nod to him. "That is a very risky one. I shall have to be very careful, and always have a long start!"

"Others?"

"Others? Of course there are others!" she said indignantly. "Everywhere—naturally—but I'm not going to tell you. You know entirely too much already. Only of one!"

"Aha!"

"A very curious one, but very exciting! A precipice that I can see right here in this room!"

"An old one?"

"Not at all! Quite new!" She made a pretense of simulating it on the rug, to pass mockingly under his eyes, daintily, with steps that trod on air. "Do you want to know where it is?"

"Where?"

"It runs from the tip of this mischievous, naughty red slipper, right straight across the carpet, to—let me see! where does it go? Over—over—over here!"

She came with her head down, peeping up from under her eyelashes, balancing with her hands on an imaginary line, straight by him, laughing to herself, and passed so close that he felt the flutter of her dress and the warm perfume from her hair.

"Little devil!" he said between his teeth, and flinging out his hand, caught her retreating shoulder.

She wrenched herself free, sprang away and turned, blazing with anger, forgetting all that she had done wilfully, maliciously, to tantalize him—illogical, unreasoning, wildly revolting at the acquiring touch of this male hand on her free body.

"How dare you!" she cried, advancing on him, gloriously enraged, fists clenched. "How dare you! You—you contemptible—you—oh, you brute, brute! You dare to touch me again—you dare!" She turned suddenly, striking him on the chest with her little fists, crude, futile, repeated blows, choking with shame, still in the dramatized mood. "You dared—you dared! And I trusted—oh!"

He did not retreat, opposing no resistance to the frantic drumming of her blows, watching her coldly, with something besides ice in the intensity of his mocking glance. Then, when from lack of breath her rage spent itself a moment, he said calmly, his glance in her glance, as a trainer's subduing a revolted animal, deliberate, slow, imperative:

"Now, stop acting!"

She caught herself up, tried to answer and found only another furious gesture.

"I said, stop acting!" he repeated bruskly, and stepping to her, caught her in his arms. She cried out in a muffled strangled voice, turning, twisting, flinging herself about fruitlessly in the iron of his embrace. He held her silently until she ceased to struggle; and then his eyes continued to hold her eyes, fixed, imperious, compelling her gaze. She remained quiet—very quiet, looking at him startled, in doubt, seeing in him something new, masterful. And as he continued steadily looking into her eyes, penetrating beyond, overcoming all resistance, a smile came to her, a smile of confession, gathering from the cloudy blue of her eyes, running down the curve of her cheek, playing about the thin upturned lips. He bent his head deliberately. She did not turn aside her lips.... Then on this embrace came another, a convulsive frantic clinging of the lips, a kiss which conquered them both, flinging a mist across their eyes, stopping their ears, stilling their reason. This kiss, which went through her like a flame, blinding out the world, hurling into her brain a new life and a new knowledge, caught him, too, in the moment when he felt the strongest, the most able to dare. Neither his eyes nor his brain had foreseen this—nor the touch of her arms twining about his neck. He had a moment of vertigo in which he suddenly ceased to think. He kissed her again, and she answered hungrily, whispering:

"I didn't know! Ah, you've come—"

All at once his mind cleared as if a hand of ice had touched his forehead. He tried to put her arms from him, aroused, suddenly frightened at where he had been whirled by the immense combustibility of nature. But still she clung to him, her eyes closed, her lips raised, repeating:

"At last—oh, at last!"

"What have I done?" he said to himself, conscious-stricken at her glorified face. He stiffened against the soft arms, that sought to draw him back, saying hoarsely:

"Dodo—listen, Dodo!"

But she shook her head, pervaded suddenly by an incomprehensible ecstasy of weakness, the oblivion of absolute surrender. She opened her eyes once, and let them close again heavily.

"Please," she said in a whisper, "don't—don't say anything. Don't talk.... It's all too wonderful!"

Then, abruptly, he tore her away from him, grasping his coat, placing a table between them.

"To-morrow!" he said, in a voice he did not recognize, knowing not what to believe, afraid of what he might say, amazed that all his will had gone.

She gave a cry, extending her hands to him.

"No! Oh, don't go!"

"I must, Dodo! I must!"

"How can you?" she cried. "How cruel!"

She covered her face suddenly, and her whole body began to tremble.

"Good night!" he said hurriedly, a prey to a wild tugging that bade him leap to her.

She did not answer, swaying in the center of her room, shaken from head to foot.

"Good night!" He took a long breath and repeated: "Good night, Dodo!"

Still she did not answer.

"To-morrow!"

No longer trusting himself, he flung through the door, out and down the stairs.

She went herself across the room, her knees sinking under her, groped for the door, weakly closed it and turned the key. And for the first time she was afraid!

How was it possible that she, who had known so much, who had feared so little, should suddenly, in the twinkling of an eye, have been overwhelmed, caught and mastered? What did it mean? And this question brought with it a fierce delirious joy in her moment of panic. For she was in fear—of many things known, and things uncomprehended: fear of where she had passed; fear of where she was going; of him!

Had it been only a game, or had he, too, been caught as she had been caught? Fear there was of the flames that lay in his touch, fear of that blank moment when she had known nothing, cared nothing, with the sudden starting horror with which once she had come out of a swoon. But most of all she had a fear of the fire that had broken out within her, in that first awful, lawless moment, in which the knowledge of life had come to her in blinding realization.

"Do I—is it love? If not, what is it? Why am I so?"

But this time she did not dramatize her mood. She found no answer, slowly recovering mastery of herself. She remained with her back against the door, her arms extended, barring the return, bewildered, weak, revolted, happy, fearing, listening.

Suddenly the sound of a returning step—a tapping on the door, irresolute, and a voice calling to her.

It was Massingale.

So! He had not been able to go! In a flash she was again the free Salamander, emerging out of the fire of conflict, triumphant by the last dramatic hazard. And being her own mistress again, she made no mistake.

She drew herself up, arms barring the door in the sign of a cross.

"Not now!" she said breathlessly.

He did not answer. She heard his step on the stairs, descending. When, at last, her arms fell, there was a gleam of exultation in her eyes. Whatever this might mean, wherever it might lead, she knew now, by that momentary yielding weakness of his return, that she would be—in the last crisis—the stronger!