ore fascinating,
more difficult, until I held you safe again in the hollow of my hand,
and then--why, then, I'd be very much tempted to throw you away!"

The verve with which this girl-woman thus vaunted her skill in the use
of those charms that dominate the opposite sex thrilled and fascinated
the lover, pierced the reserve that possession had overcast on ardor.
His cheeks flushed, under the provocation of the glances with which she
marked the allurements of which she was the mistress. As she finished
speaking, he sprang up from his chair, caught her in his arms, and drew
her passionately to his breast. But Cicily avoided the kiss he would
have pressed on her lips. With her mouth at his ear, she whispered,
plaintively now, no longer boastful, only a timid, fearing, jealous
woman:

[Illustration]

"Yes, I can fight a rival who is a woman, Charles, and I can win. But
this other rival, this fascinating monstrous, evil goddess--ah!"

Hamilton held his wife away from him by the shoulders, mid regarded her
in bewilderment.

"Evil goddess!" he repeated, half in doubt as to her meaning.

"Surely, she must be that," Cicily declared, firmly; "this spirit who is
the goddess of modern business, whom I feel absorbing you day by day,
taking from me more and ever more of your thoughts, of your heart, of
your soul, changing you in every vital way, and doing it in spite of all
that I can do, though I fight against her with all my strength! Oh, it's
terrible, the hopelessness of it all! Some day all of you will be gone,
forever!"

"Swallowed up by the evil spirit?" Hamilton asked, quizzically, with a
smile.

"Yes!" The answer was given with a seriousness that rebuked his levity
in the presence of possible catastrophe.

The husband repeated his threadbare argument.

"But, dear," he urged gently, "you know that I love you just the same."

There was a curious, cynical sadness in the wife's voice as she replied:

"Probably, a man under ether loves one just the same. But who wants to
be loved by a man under ether?"

"Cicily, you exaggerate!" Hamilton exclaimed. He dropped his hands from
her shoulders, and reseated himself, while she remained standing before
him. There was petulance in his inflection when he spoke again: "I have
you, and I have my business."

Cicily made a _moue_ that sufficiently expressed her weariness of this
time-worn fact.

"Your two loves!" she said, bitterly. "Now, at this moment, you think
that the