.

"So you want--the kids," he said at last, and a curious metallic
quality was in his voice. "Say," he added thoughtfully, "you women are
queer ones."

"Maybe we are," retorted Jessie. She tried to laugh as she spoke, but
it was a dismal failure. Then she hurried on. "Yes," she cried a
little shrilly, "it was part of our bargain, and--so far you have not
carried it out."

"Bargain?" The man's brows went up.

"Yes, bargain."

"I don't remember a--bargain." James' eyes had in them an ominous
glitter.

"Then you've got a bad memory."

"I sure haven't, Jess. I sure haven't that. I generally remember good.
And what I remember now is that I promised you those kids if you
needed them. I swore that you should have 'em. But I made no bargain.
Guess women don't see things dead right. This is the first time you've
spoken to me of this, and you say I haven't fulfilled my bargain. When
I refuse to give you them kiddies, it's time to take that tone. You
want them kids. Well--go on."

The change in her lover's manner warned Jessie that danger lay ahead.
In the brief time she had spent under his roof she had already learned
that, as yet, she had only seen the gentlest side of the man, and that
the other side was always perilously near the surface.

In the beginning this had been rather a delight to her to think that
she, of all people, was privileged to bask in the sunny side of a man
who habitually displayed the storm clouds of his fiercer side to the
world in general. But since that time a change, which she neither knew
nor understood, had come over her, and, instead of rejoicing that he
possessed that harsher nature, she rather feared it, feared that it
might be turned upon her.

It was this change that had helped to bring her woman's cunning into
play. It was this change which had brought her her haunting visions of
the old life. It was this change which had prompted her that she must
keep her lover at arm's length--as yet. It was this change, had she
paused to analyze it, which might have told her of the hideous mistake
she had made. That the passion which she had believed to be an
absorbing love for the man was merely a passion, a base human passion,
inspired in a weak, discontented woman. But as yet she understood
nothing of this. The glamour of the man's personality still had power
to sway her, and she acknowledged it in her next words.

"Don't be angry, Jim dear," she said, with a smile of seductive
sweetness