"Not until you have settled the terms of peace," he answered with that
leering smile. "Fortune has favored me, this afternoon, and I mean to
profit by it."

For an instant, she looked at him--frightened and dismayed. Suddenly, with
the flash-like quickness that was a part of her physical inheritance from
her mountain life, she darted past him; eluding his effort to detain
her--and was out of the building.

With an oath, the man, acting upon the impulse of the moment, ran after
her. Outside the door of the studio, he caught a glimpse of her white
dress as she disappeared into the rose garden. In the garden, he saw her
as she slipped through the little gate in the far corner of the hedge,
into the orange grove. Recklessly he followed. Among the trees, he
glimpsed, again, the white flash of her skirts, and dashed forward. At the
farther edge of the grove that walled in the little yard where Sibyl
lived, he saw her standing by the kitchen door. But between the girl and
that last row of close-set trees, waiting his coming, stood the woman with
the disfigured face.

Rutlidge paused--angry with himself for so foolishly yielding to the
impulse of his passion.

Myra Willard went toward him fearlessly--her fine eyes blazing with
righteous indignation. "What are you trying to do, James Rutlidge?" she
demanded--and her words were bold and clear.

The man was silent.

"You are evidently a worthy son of your father," the woman
continued--every clear-cut word biting into his consciousness with
stinging scorn. "He, in his day, did all he knew to turn this world into a
hell for those who were unfortunate enough to please his vile fancy. You,
I see, are following faithfully his footsteps. I know you, and the creed
of your kind--as I knew your father before you. No girl of innocent beauty
is safe from you. Your unclean mind is as incapable of believing in
virtue, as you are helpless in the grip of your own insane lust."

The man was stung to fury by her cutting words. "Take your ugly face out
of my sight," he said brutally.

Fearlessly, she drew a step nearer. "It is because I am a woman that I
have this ugly face, James Rutlidge." She touched her disfigured
cheek--"These scars are the marks of the beast that rules you, sir, body
and soul. Leave this place, or, as there is a God, I'll tell a tale that
will forbid you ever showing your own evil countenance in public, again."

Something in her eyes and in her manner, as she spoke