s hostess laced her fingers behind her beautiful, tawny head, quite
well aware that the attitude set off the perfect modeling of the soft,
supple body. She looked up at him with a mocking little smile.

"Rumor says that she has run away, my lord. Is it true?"

"Yes. Slipped away on the stage this morning."

"That's a good sign. She was afraid to stay."

It was a part of the fiction between them that Mrs. Mallory was to give
him the benefit of her advice in his wooing of her rival. She seemed to
take it for granted that he would at last marry Sheba after wearing away
the rigid Puritanism of her resentment.

Macdonald had never liked her so well as now. Her point of view was so
sane, so reasonable. It asked for no impossible virtues in a man. There
was something restful in her genial, derisive understanding of him. She
had a silent divination of his moods and ministered indolently to them.

"Do you think so? Ought I to follow her?" he asked.

She showed a row of perfect teeth in a low ripple of amusement. The
situation at least was piquant, even though it was at her expense.

"No. Give the girl time. Catch her impulse on the rebound. She'll be
bored to death at Katma and she will come back docile."

Her scarlet lips, the long, unbroken lines of the sinuous, opulent body,
the challenge of the smouldering eyes, the warmth of her laughter, all
invited him to forget the charms of other women. The faint feminine
perfume of her was wafted to his brain. He felt a besieging of the
blood.

Stepping behind the chair in which she sat, he tilted back the head of
lustrous bronze, and very deliberately kissed her on the lips.

For a moment she gave herself to his embrace, then pushed him back,
rose, and walked across the room to a little table. With fingers that
trembled slightly she lit a cigarette. Sheathed in her close-fitting
gown, she made a strong carnal appeal to him, but there was between
them, too, a close bond of the spirit. He made no apologies, no
explanation.

Presently she turned and looked at him. Only the deeper color beneath
her eyes betrayed any excitement.

"Unless I'm a bad prophet you'll get the answer you want when she comes
back, Colby."

He thought her reply to his indiscretion superb. It admitted complicity,
reproached, warned, and at the same time ignored. Never before had she
called him by his given name. He took it as a token of forgiveness and
renunciation.

Why was it not Genevieve Mallor