gave her the mastery. His teeth
clenched and his passion blazed in his eyes as he said: "No--you witch!
I'll see it through."

She smiled lightly. "I suppose you'll come to the offices of the
company--occasionally?" She drew nearer, stood at the corner of the
desk. Into her exquisite eyes came a look of tenderness. "And I shall be
glad to see you."

"You mean that?" he said, despising himself for his humble eagerness,
and hating her even as he loved her.

"Indeed I do." She smiled bewitchingly. "You are a lot better man than
you think."

"I am an awful fool about you," retorted he. "You see, I play my game
with all my cards on the table. I wish I could say the same of you."

"I am not playing a game," replied she. "You make a mystery where there
isn't any. And--all your cards aren't on the table." She laughed
mockingly. "At least, you think there's one that isn't--though, really,
it is."

"Yes?"

"About your engagement."

He covered superbly. "Oh," said he in the most indifferent tone. "Tetlow
told you."

"As soon as I heard that," she went on, "I felt better about you. I
understand how it is with men--the passing fancies they have for
women."

"How did you learn?" demanded he.

"Do you think a girl could spend several years knocking about down town
in New York without getting experience?"

He smiled--a forced smile of raillery, hiding sudden fierce suspicion
and jealousy. "I should say not. But you always pretend innocence."

"I can't be held responsible for what you read into my looks and into
what I say," observed she with her air of a wise old infant. "But I was
so glad to find out that you were seriously in love with a nice girl up
town."

He burst out laughing. She gazed at him in childlike surprise. "Why are
you laughing at me?" she asked.

"Nothing--nothing," he assured her. He would have found it difficult to
explain why he was so intensely amused at hearing the grand Josephine
Burroughs called "a nice girl up town."

"You are in love with her? You are engaged to her?" she inquired, her
grave eyes upon him with an irresistible appeal for truth in them.

"Tetlow didn't lie to you," evaded he. "You don't know it, but Tetlow is
going to ask you to marry him."

"Yes, I knew," replied she indifferently.

"How? Did he tell you?"

"No. Just as I knew you were not going to ask me to marry you."

The mere phrase, even when stated as a negation, gave him a sensation of
ice suddenly laid agai