ted them very much indeed.

After supper she had been dreamily playing over to herself one of
Chopin's waltzes, when she became aware, by some instinct, that she was
not alone in the room. There had been no least sound, no slightest stir
to betray an alien presence. Yet that some one was in the room she knew,
and by some subtle sixth sense could even put a name to the intruder.

Without turning she called over her shoulder: "Shall I finish the
waltz?" No faintest tremor in the clear, sweet voice betrayed the racing
heart.

"Y'u're a cool hand, my friend," came his ready answer. "But I think
we'll dispense with the music. I had enough last time to serve me for
twice."

She laughed as she swung on the stool, with that musical scorn which
both allured and maddened. "I did rather do you that time," she allowed.

"This is the return match. You won then. I win now," he told her, with a
look that chilled.

"Indeed! But isn't that rather discounting the future?"

"Only the immediate future. Y'u're mine, my beauty, and I mean to take
y'u with me."

Just a disdainful sweep of her eyes she gave him as she rose from the
piano-stool and rearranged the lamps. "You mean so much that never comes
to pass, Mr. Bannister. The road to the nether regions is paved with
good intentions, we are given to understand. Not that yours can by any
stretch of imagination be called 'good intentions.'"

"Contrariwise, then, perhaps the road to heaven may be paved with evil
intentions. Since y'u travel the road with me, wherever it may lead, it
were but gallant to hope so."

He took three sharp steps toward her and stood looking down in her face,
her sweet slenderness so close to him that the perfume mounted to his
brain. Surely no maiden had ever been more desirable than this one, who
held him in such contemptuous estimation that only her steady eyes
moved at his approach. These held to his and defied him, while she stood
leaning motionless against the table with such strong and supple grace.
She knew what he meant to do, hated him for it, and would not give him
the satisfaction of flying an inch from him or struggling with him.

"Your eyes are pools of splendor. That's right. Make them flash fire.
I love to see such spirit, since it offers a more enticing pleasure
in breaking," he told her, with an admiration half ironic but wholly
genuine. "Pools of splendor, my beauty! Therefore I salute them."

At the touch of his lips upon her eyelids