e subject. She nodded her
head at the garments.

"I see you like pretty things. It is good judgment for a young woman.
They're the bait for men--half the weapons in the battle. They win men,
and they hold men--" She broke off to demand almost fiercely: "And you,
you would keep your husband?--always, always--if you can?"

"I intend to. I will make him love me always and always."

Saxon ceased, troubled and surprised that she should be so intimate with
a stranger.

"'Tis a queer thing, this love of men," Mercedes said. "And a failing of
all women is it to believe they know men like books. And with breaking
hearts, die they do, most women, out of their ignorance of men and still
foolishly believing they know all about them. Oh, la la, the little
fools. And so you say, little new-married woman, that you will make your
man love you always and always? And so they all say it, knowing men and
the queerness of men's love the way they think they do. Easier it is
to win the capital prize in the Little Louisiana, but the little
new-married women never know it until too late. But you--you have begun
well. Stay by your pretties and your looks. 'Twas so you won your man,
'tis so you'll hold him. But that is not all. Some time I will talk with
you and tell what few women trouble to know, what few women ever come to
know.--Saxon!--'tis a strong, handsome name for a woman. But you don't
look it. Oh, I've watched you. French you are, with a Frenchiness beyond
dispute. Tell Mr. Roberts I congratulate him on his good taste."

She paused, her hand on the knob of her kitchen door.

"And come and see me some time. You will never be sorry. I can teach you
much. Come in the afternoon. My man is night watchman in the yards and
sleeps of mornings. He's sleeping now."

Saxon went into the house puzzling and pondering. Anything but ordinary
was this lean, dark-skinned woman, with the face withered as if scorched
in great heats, and the eyes, large and black, that flashed and flamed
with advertisement of an unquenched inner conflagration. Old she
was--Saxon caught herself debating anywhere between fifty and seventy;
and her hair, which had once been blackest black, was streaked
plentifully with gray. Especially noteworthy to Saxon was her speech.
Good English it was, better than that to which Saxon was accustomed. Yet
the woman was not American. On the other hand, she had no perceptible
accent. Rather were her words touched by a foreignness so