She was not the least afraid, nor, in fact, was she unprepared for the discovery. When Sassoon had tempted her with the prospects of a party, she was not altogether his dupe. Yet, under safe conditions, she was disposed, to-night, to grant him the intimacy of a tÊte-À-tÊte. She knew that he had never yet said to her what he wanted, and she had a great curiosity to know what he would hold before her eyes. The respectability of the crowd seen through the brilliant windows, the publicity of the position, all reassured her that there could be no trap beyond the powers of her ingenuity. She examined the dressing-room hastily. Besides the door that gave on to the salon, there were two others—one, which was locked, to a farther suite, and a second, opening into the ante-chamber.

She went to the window and looked down on the flattened crowd flowing like inky pools under the phosphorescent arc-lights; the scurrying roofs of automobiles, darting across the lighted trolleys, calculating the effect of a cry. Then she opened the door into the ante-chamber, hesitating. It would be the easiest thing in the world to leave now, without noise, while Sassoon was busy with the ordering. But curiosity was strong, and the need of a sensation—of a triumph over danger, which would give back that old audacity that had almost departed in these last bitter days. She bit her lip thoughtfully, hesitated a moment, and then, tiptoeing quietly to the outer door, removed the key, assuring herself that there were no bolts to fasten it. It might be the last escapade, perhaps the last time that she would baffle him. The tenth was only three days away and in the need of setting the stage for her final climax she felt the need, suddenly, of carrying this motive up to the brink—yes, even of calmly looking over.

She left her hat with her coat in the dressing-room, and came out confidently, her hands on her hips, which swayed slightly in the languorous movement of the Spanish indolence, mockery in her eyes.

"No one here yet?" she asked unconcernedly.

"Not seven," he replied, glancing at his watch.

"Artists are always late!"

He assented, watching her.

"This the dining-room?" she said, moving to the right.

"Wait!"

"Why?"

"I want to give you a surprise."

"I know it already!"

"What?"

"There's no party at all; we're dining together," she said, looking at him directly. "Don't lie. Besides, I knew it all the time!"

"What?" he said amazed.

"Naturally! Do you think I would be here if I didn't want to be? Well, to-night, then, is the big temptation? I hope you'll be very interesting!"

"So you knew!" he said, pursing his lips.

"You're disappointed because I'm not afraid!" she told him, laughing. "Well, I'm not! Besides, I have taken my precautions!"

"What do you mean?" he asked uneasily.

"There's a door from the dressing-room into the vestibule—you gave me plenty of time," she said quietly. "There happened to be a party I knew below when we came in, or we would not be here. They are to take me home—later."

"You went down—" he said slowly, at a loss whether to believe her or not. She nodded, and still incredulous, he went to the dressing-room, assuring himself that she had at least spoken the truth about the door.

"Well?" she said, folding her arms and laughing at him, but feeling every nerve and fiber alert with the sense of combat.

"Miss Baxter," he answered, standing by her and fastening his heavy oriental gaze on hers, "I have never, in all my life, wanted a woman as I want you!"

"I hope so!"

"Don't you know that?"

"It's the devil in me, then."

"The devil and the child," he said quietly.

She didn't like his look, so she motioned him away, saying:

"Something to eat first, please, and business later."

"With any other woman I would understand that," he said, without shifting his gaze.

"Perhaps I am simpler than you think?"

"Let's go in to dinner!" he said abruptly.

He went to the curtain and drew it aside deferentially. She went past him quickly, watching him from under her eyelashes, choosing that seat at the table which would give her quick retreat in case of need. The waiter, bald and correctly vacant of expression, arrived after a discreet knock, and with the swinging of the door came a sudden burst of laughter from an arriving party. She waved away the proffered cocktail.

"Nothing?" he asked.

"At such an important interview? Of course not!"

He raised his glass to her honor, and she nodded.

"You don't look so terrible, after all," she said, examining him with a critical smile; and to herself she said disdainfully, as she had said another time: "If this is a dangerous man, what is it makes him dangerous?"

But this query was not simply of amusement. The seriousness of life had so obtruded itself upon her, in the last preparatory weeks, that she wanted to know everything, to have before her in detail that existence which could depend on his soft hands and wearied eyes.

"So I puzzle you very much?"

"You know you do!" he said, with a slow smile, still resolved to continue the rÔle of bon enfant.

"Most women are simpler, then?"

"Much!"

"And how do you do?" she said, her elbows on the table, leaning forward eagerly. "Just say flatly, 'How much?'"

He ran a lean finger through the mounting mustache, smiling.

"Usually, yes!"

"And they all have their price?"

"Not all, no; but all that I want," he answered frankly.

"That must be quite exciting—the estimating, I mean," she said, to draw him out. "Imagine looking at a woman and saying: 'This one will cost me a thousand, this one ten thousand, and this one will be very, very expensive.' It must be quite amusing to see if you guess right!"

"Very amusing—yes."

"Sassoon, what's my price?" she asked abruptly.

"I didn't say you had one."

"You said all women you wanted."

"Miss Baxter," he said slowly, "you began this conversation."

"Yes—and let's drop all pretenses; let's talk to each other, since we are here. Let me know you as you really are. I wish it!"

"Very well!" he said, pleased. He rested his elbows likewise on the table, scanning his left hand, turning the great emerald ring that adorned it. "I believe every woman has her price, under certain conditions: first, that you know the need of money, and, most important, that you are old enough to understand what things can be bought!"

"You think I am too young?"

"I am not sure! You are very romantic," he said, and as she laughed at this interpretation, he continued: "If you were thirty instead of twenty-two, you could not make a mistake!"

"That's a curious way to put it!"

"I am not speaking of ten thousand or twenty thousand dollars," he said quietly. "You are the exception. You are the sort of woman that would hold a man for years. Miss Baxter, do you remember what the Comte de Joncy told you?"

"Ah, yes; he liked my eyes," she said, laughing.

"He estimated them at a million each. He knew!"

"What nonsense you are talking!"

"I am talking of a career," he said quietly. "Consider it. It's worth considering!"

"Ah, now I understand! Well, go on!"

"Just a little glass?" he said, raising the champagne.

"Sounds like Bowery melodrama," she said mockingly. "The Wicked Millionaire. Please be serious! It's so nice to talk of millions!"

"If you knew what I know," he said, looking beyond her and shrugging his shoulders, "it would be easy to discuss! There's only one thing important in life, Miss Baxter. Money!"

"And love?"

"Love! You will love ten—twenty times! What do you know of such things?" he said rapidly. "You have a vague illusion before your eyes, and in reality, what is guiding you is the same principle of nature that governs all life. A woman in the state you are in now is really in a state of hysteria—an unnatural state, that causes you to do any number of illogical things, crazy things—"

"As, for instance, falling in love?"

"Falling in love with impossible people," he corrected. "What do you know of love, anyhow? I may know."

"You!" she said scornfully.

"Yes—now. I've seen the rest, and if I love, it's the young, the beautiful, the past. I won't explain: you must experience to comprehend! Another thing about yourself that you don't understand: to love and to be loved are two different things. A woman like you will always be loved. You won't love, really love, not for a long while—not until you begin to grow old! What stops you from using me? Family? You have none! Friends? Bah!"

"And the man?" she said coldly, beginning fiercely to resent the brutality of his philosophy, though she had determined to remain impersonal and amused.

"The man!" He laughed, throwing himself back in his chair, scowling a little at this direct personal allusion. "There you have it! With one question you have betrayed your whole morality—woman's morality! The man! If I were a young cub with a romantic strut, talking big, it would be different; it would not be a case of selling yourself—it would be an infatuation!"

"Perhaps it is our morality," she said indignantly, thinking of Massingale, and led insensibly into a defensive attitude. "Say it is! It's at least natural!"

"You mean, in my case, the thing that makes you recoil is myself?" he said abruptly. "More than any other consideration? Say it!"

"Quite true!"

"If I were asking you to marry me, if you had that opportunity, would that feeling stop you?"

She was silent, surprised.

"It's a money transaction in either case, isn't it?"

"What a terrible view of life you have!" she said, appalled. She had been prepared for danger of an overt character, not for the insidious subtle poisoning which he was distilling in her ears. She drew back, breathing quickly, fiercely resisting his ideas. "Money, money—that's all you see, because that's all you understand!"

"I only wish to make you see!" he said, shrugging his shoulders, "that there is no difference in being what I offer you and in being—"

"Mrs. Sassoon!" she said curtly.

He did not like the reference, man-like, though he frowned and admitted the allusion with a wave of his fingers.

"As you wish!" Then he continued, with an unwonted energy for his tired attitude: "No, I don't say everything can be controlled by money, but that our world is. There are two sorts of human beings: those who work, and those who live for pleasure. It's the last we're talking about. What are you? You're a nervous, pretty little animal that has learned to love luxury. You may know it, or you may not. You may have had the taste of it before you came here, but you've steeped yourself in it since. You couldn't help yourself! It's all about you; it's the corruption in every street; it's New York! Don't you think I know you? What were you thinking as you stood before that window to-night?"

"Yes, I love luxury!" she said abruptly, admitting it to shut him off.

"If you had never known New York, you might be different," he continued triumphantly. "You might marry and be satisfied with a commonplace routine existence. But, little girl, you're what you are! You covet everything: jewels—oh, I saw your eyes when you refused that necklace; clothes—you know your own worth and you've dreamed, you must have dreamed, of what you'd be if you could wear what other women wear; you want to go where others go, pay what others pay; you want to be watched, courted, admired. Do you think you'll ever love any man as you love yourself?"

"It isn't true!" she said furiously; yet his exposition had left her weakly terrified.

"It is true! You know it! Stand up; look in the mirror! See yourself as you can be, with jewels in your hair, against your neck, in dresses that are worth hundreds, in furs that are worth thousands! Do you think you could go in any assembly, theater or restaurant, but every one wouldn't turn in amazement?"

She felt troubled, struggling against a heavy lassitude, regretting that she had given him this opportunity; and instinctively, by a force beyond her control, she raised her eyes to the mirror at the end of the room, and saw a little girl in a simple dress, her hair in a confusion of golden curls, and behind her the triumphant woman he had conjured to her eyes.

"No coffee!" she said, nervously averting her eyes from his eager gaze. "It's hot, dreadfully hot, in here."

There came a moment's pause, a lull after the first skirmish, during which he lighted a cigar and waited, well content.

"It's all a question of opportunity," he began again, while her troubled eyes went past him to the mirror of the future. "You can do now what you can't do later! Do you want to end in a boarding-house, Miss Baxter?"

"Why do you—care for me?" she asked him abruptly.

"In the beginning, because you resisted me," he said, turning his cigar in his fingers. "Now, because you hate me!"

"And knowing that I hate you, you want me?"

"A thousand times more!" he said, and for the first time the greed and hunger rose in his eyes. But quickly he controlled himself.

"The moment I stopped resisting you, you would not care!" she said slowly.

"True; but you would always resist!" he said quickly. "Besides, that is what I like—what you must always do!"

He spoke now with eagerness, a restlessness in his voice, uneasiness in his eyes. Despite the tenseness of the situation, looking on him thus, a flash of pity and horror came to her as she felt, in her progress into the knowledge of life, the hidden tragedies that lurk in the reverse of a glittering medal.

"You overestimate what I can do!" she said at last.

"What are you afraid of?" he asked her, ignoring the remark. "The opinion of society?"

She did not answer.

"Go on with your career!" he said impatiently. "The world will close its eyes to what you do! If you haven't the courage, there's always a way. Marry and separate!"

She looked so surprised at this that a thin smile came over his lips.

"There are a dozen men I can call on who will do you that slight service!" he said grimly. "Listen! Let it be so! I will procure you a husband, a very convenient, manageable husband, who will appear and disappear. You'll become Mrs. Jones or Mrs. Smith, and after a few months you can divorce. You will then be, in the eyes of the world, perfectly qualified to do whatever you please, without danger of criticism. That's society for you!"

"So that's the way it is done!" she thought, quite excited. For a brief moment she let herself go into the rÔle he had opened for her, wondering if it were possible—if, under any circumstance, even if Massingale should utterly fail her, she could succeed as he had prophesied. "Really," she said, amazed, "you have men who would sell themselves for that?"

"Do you wish to see?" he said, with a shrug of his shoulders. "It can be done to-night!"

"To-night?"

"You don't believe me? I'll telephone now; I'll have your future husband here in half an hour. Would you like to see him?"

"Not to-night!" she said, laughing. Then, pushing back, she added: "Are you through?"

"Not quite."

He rose, took from his pocketbook two bills of a thousand dollars each, and laid them beside her plate.

"What's this for?" she asked, raising her eyes.

"For the pleasure you have given me, Miss Baxter, in permitting me to take dinner with you," he answered, smiling.

"Just for that?" she said ironically.

"Just for that!" he repeated. He drew back toward the window. "You see, it was not so dangerous, after all. If you will get your things now, we shall go!"

Her sense of the dramatic was struck.

"Ah, that's very clever of you!" she said, quite excited. Two thousand dollars just for the favor of dining with her! How subtly he proclaimed what she might expect in the future! The bills were horribly real, seeming to adhere to her fingers. She repeated, wildly stirred: "Very clever!"

He came closer to her, with veiled eagerness.

"Well, what is it to be?"

She left the money on the table, answering quietly:

"You know, don't you?"

"You will—"

"No!—of course!"

He frowned impatiently.

"Think it over!"

"There's no need!"

"How much do you want? Come, tell me!" he said roughly, with a brutality from which the mask had been withdrawn.

She laughed triumphantly at the reappearance of the true Sassoon.

"Ah, I would be very expensive!"

"I don't care!"

"You haven't enough!"

"What!" he cried angrily, trying to seize her wrist. "You are fool enough to refuse? You can have anything you want. I will make you anything!"

"Sassoon, it's the man!" she said scornfully.

He drew back, red with anger.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that everything you have said fills me with horror!" she cried, with a need of self-expostulation. "I wouldn't be you for all the millions in the world! Thank God, I can be a fool! I can love like a human being! I'd rather give up everything in the world to the man I adore—"

With an exclamation, he sprang toward her, rage and lust in his eyes; but, prepared, she flung a chair against his legs and escaped into the drawing-room, slamming the door in his face, and darting from the vestibule into the hall as he came blindly in pursuit. She did not stop until she had descended the flight of stairs. Below, she turned, and perceived his passion distorted face glowering down from the upper landing.

"Will you kindly bring my things down, Mr. Sassoon? I'm going now," she said, breathless, but exhilarated by the escape and the victory.

"Come and get them!" he said furiously, and he disappeared.

She frowned, not relishing the turn, calculating how to extricate herself. At length, reluctantly, she descended the second flight, resolved to send a boy up-stairs for her things. The vestibule in which she found herself was a large one with glass doors opening into the noisy restaurant, played over by an energetic Hungarian orchestra. As she hesitated, conscious of the strange figure she presented, the glass doors swung hastily and Harrigan Blood came out.

"Dodo! I thought I recognized you!" he cried, stopping short. "What in the name of the incredible—"

She went to him quickly, grasping his arm, actuated by a sudden brilliant plan of revenge.

"Mr. Blood—Harrigan!" she said quickly. "I was brought here by a gentleman who had told me it was to be a party of eight or ten. I have just escaped from the trap he laid for me! Will you give me your arm while I go and reclaim my things?"

"Will I? I'll throttle him!" he said angrily. "The contemptible cur! Who is he?"

"Sassoon!"

"My God!"

They went up-stairs, and pushed aside the half-open doors. At her entrance, Sassoon turned like a startled animal, his face almost unrecognizable with rage. In his fury he had caught his napkin and torn it into shreds. A couple of chairs were overturned, and the covering of the table pulled down. At the sight of Harrigan Blood striding in with menacing looks, Sassoon checked his first impetuous advance, halting abruptly, murder in his heart.

"I have come for my things, Mr. Sassoon, since you would not bring them to me," DorÉ said, "and I found a gentleman to accompany me."

"Is it true, what Miss Baxter says?" said Harrigan Blood, clearing the space that separated them. "Did you bring her here with a lie—to a trap?"

"Mind your own business!" cried Sassoon, with a scream of rage. "Who are you to preach morality to me? You're a fine one to reproach any one, you are!"

"I've done a lot of things in my life," said Blood, with rising wrath, "but I never took a woman with a lie—like a thief! Sassoon, you're a coward and a dirty cur!"

He caught him by the throat in his powerful grip, and slapped him twice across the face; then, as a dog with a rat, he shook him in the air and flung him in a heap against the foot of a chair, where he lay, stunned and gasping for breath. Dodo, with her hat and coat, came out hastily, very much frightened, awed at the sight of men in rage and combat.

"Oh, let's go—let's go!" she cried. "Oh, is he hurt? You've not—"

"Killed him? No, so much the worse!" Blood said scornfully. "Now get away quickly; there must be no scandal!"

Below, on the sidewalk, he placed her in a taxicab, but refused to enter with her.

"No," he said, shaking his head. "I'm a very human person, Miss Baxter; I'm not going in the way of temptation, when I know there's no hope. It's good-by, young lady!"

"I do like you—I admire you, Mr. Blood," she said, retaining his hand. "Don't hate me!"

He looked at her for a moment, struggling with his emotion. At last he said quietly, watching her with his strange eyes, that had the glowing quality of the feline:

"Dodo, shall I come?"

She drew back as if wounded; then she closed the door, afraid.

"No!"

"You see? Good-by!"

"Don't hate me!" she said, suddenly leaning out of the window and seizing his arm convulsively. "You mustn't! I'm only a wild, crazy little thing."

"You're all that!" he said gravely. "Look here! After to-night I've a right to say this. Look out! You're going to get into trouble; mind what I say—the game's dangerous!"

He raised his hat, signaled the driver and turned to walk in the direction of the subway. She was immensely sorry to lose him. She wanted to call after him again not to hate her. For she had a feeling now that all men, all whom she had gathered about her, hated her or would come to hate her; that it was not love she inspired, but only an antagonism. She was not sure even of Massingale. How could he love her, when she brought nothing but unrest into his life—when she did nothing but make him miserable and unhappy from morning to night? Then, she felt it was the approach of the fatal tenth of March that was disorganizing her, horribly hypnotizing her, shattering all her nerves, and she said to herself that it could not go on; she must find peace somewhere; she would not wait. To-morrow there would be a decision between Massingale and herself. Either that, or she would go to Blainey, where she belonged, and enter the world of work. To-morrow, without further delay she would decide her life, before Lindaberry could return, or that haunting image of her former life.

And when, at length, she had passed from the taxicab up the stoop and into the dim-lit hall, Josh Nebbins was waiting for her in the gloom of the parlor, as she had known for days he would come out of those musty shadows which were like mists of the past.