e looked at him, half doubting whether
he was really there or not. He had never looked so handsome, with his
dreamy eyes floating under his heavy overhanging hair, and his pointed
brown beard defined against his lustrous shirtfront. His mellowly
modulated, mysterious voice lulled her; when Mela made an errand out of
the room, and Beaton crossed to her and sat down by her, she shivered.

"Are you cold?" he asked, and she felt the cruel mockery and exultant
consciousness of power in his tone, as perhaps a wild thing feels
captivity in the voice of its keeper. But now, she said she would still
forgive him if he asked her.

Mela came back, and the talk fell again to the former level; but Beaton
had not said anything that really meant what she wished, and she saw that
he intended to say nothing. Her heart began to burn like a fire in her
breast.

"You been tellun' him about our goun' to Europe?" Mela asked.

"No," said Christine, briefly, and looking at the fan spread out on her
lap.

Beaton asked when; and then he rose, and said if it was so soon, he
supposed he should not see them again, unless he saw them in Paris; he
might very likely run over during the summer. He said to himself that he
had given it a fair trial with Christine, and he could not make it go.

Christine rose, with a kind of gasp; and mechanically followed him to the
door of the drawing-room; Mela came, too; and while he was putting on his
overcoat, she gurgled and bubbled in good-humor with all the world.
Christine stood looking at him, and thinking how still handsomer he was
in his overcoat; and that fire burned fiercer in her. She felt him more
than life to her and knew him lost, and the frenzy, that makes a woman
kill the man she loves, or fling vitriol to destroy the beauty she cannot
have for all hers, possessed her lawless soul. He gave his hand to Mela,
and said, in his wind-harp stop, "Good-bye."

As he put out his hand to Christine, she pushed it aside with a scream of
rage; she flashed at him, and with both hands made a feline pass at the
face he bent toward her. He sprang back, and after an instant of
stupefaction he pulled open the door behind him and ran out into the
street.

"Well, Christine Dryfoos!" said Mela, "Sprang at him like a wild-cat!"

"I, don't care," Christine shrieked. "I'll tear his eyes out!" She flew
up-stairs to her own room, and left the burden of the explanation to
Mela, who did it justice.

Beaton found himsel