I
see you?"

"Oh, you mustn't," she said, her fingers going nervously to her
lips. "I can't see you--I--I--"

"Oh, I mustn't, mustn't I? Look here"--he took her arm and
drew her slightly closer--"you and I might as well understand
each other right now. I like you. Do you like me? Say?"

She looked at him, her eyes wide, filled with wonder, with fear,
with a growing terror.

"I don't know," she gasped, her lips dry.

"Do you?" He fixed her grimly, firmly with his eyes.

"I don't know."

"Look at me," he said.

"Yes," she replied.

He pulled her to him quickly. "I'll talk to you later," he said,
and put his lips masterfully to hers.

She was horrified, stunned, like a bird in the grasp of a cat; but
through it all something tremendously vital and insistent was speaking
to her. He released her with a short laugh. "We won't do any more of
this here, but, remember, you belong to me," he said, as he turned and
walked nonchalantly down the hall. Jennie, in sheer panic, ran to her
mistress's room and locked the door behind her.

CHAPTER XVII

The shock of this sudden encounter was so great to Jennie that she
was hours in recovering herself. At first she did not understand
clearly just what had happened. Out of clear sky, as it were, this
astonishing thing had taken place. She had yielded herself to another
man. Why? Why? she asked herself, and yet within her own consciousness
there was an answer. Though she could not explain her own emotions,
she belonged to him temperamentally and he belonged to her.

There is a fate in love and a fate in fight. This strong,
intellectual bear of a man, son of a wealthy manufacturer, stationed,
so far as material conditions were concerned, in a world immensely
superior to that in which Jennie moved, was, nevertheless,
instinctively, magnetically, and chemically drawn to this poor
serving-maid. She was his natural affinity, though he did not know
it--the one woman who answered somehow the biggest need of his
nature. Lester Kane had known all sorts of women, rich and poor, the
highly bred maidens of his own class, the daughters of the
proletariat, but he had never yet found one who seemed to combine for
him the traits of an ideal woman--sympathy, kindliness of
judgment, youth, and beauty. Yet this ideal remained fixedly seated in
the back of his brain--when the right woman appeared he intended
to take her. He had the notion that, for purposes of marriage, he
ought perh