and
games, little gossip of the university, with now and then a telling
personality, and a sweep of long lashes over pearly cheeks, or a lifting
of great, innocent eyes of admiration to his face.

She offered wine in delicate gold-incrusted ruby glasses, but Courtland
did not drink. He scarcely noticed her veiled annoyance at his refusal.
He was drinking in the wine of her presence. She suggested that he
smoke, and would not have hesitated to join him, perhaps, but he told
her he was in training, and she cooed softly of his wonderful strength
of character in resisting.

By this time he was in the coveted seat beside her on the couch, and the
fire burned low and red. They had ceased to talk of games and dances.
They were talking of each other, those intimate nothings that mean a
breaking down of distance and a rapidly growing familiarity.

The young man was aware of the fascination of the small figure in her
crimson robings, sitting so demurely in the firelight, the gauzy scarf
dropped away from her white neck and shoulders, the lovely curve of her
baby cheek and tempting neck showing against the background of the
shadows behind her. He was aware of a distinct longing to take her in
his arms and crush her to him, as he would pluck a red berry from a
bank, and feel its stain upon his lips. Stain! A stain was a thing that
was hard to remove. There were blood-stains sometimes and agonies; and
yet men wanted to pluck the berries and feel the stain upon their lips!

He was not under the hallucination that he was suddenly falling in love
with this girl. He did not name the passionate outcry in his soul love.
He knew she had been a charmer of many, and in yielding himself to her
recognized power he was for the moment playing with a force that was new
and interesting, with which he had felt altogether strong enough to
contend for an evening or he would not have come. That it should thrill
along all his senses with this unreasoning rapture was most astonishing.
He had never been a fellow to "fall" for every girl he met, and now he
felt himself gradually yielding to the beautiful spell about him with a
kind of wonder.

The lights and coloring of the room that had smote his senses
unpleasantly when he first entered had thrown him now into a kind of
delicious fever. The neglected wine sparkling dimly in the costly
glasses seemed a part of it. He felt an impulse to reach out, seize a
glass, and drain it. What if he should? What