f I believed that, as if you believed it yourself," she scoffed.

Her pretty pouting lips, the long supple unbroken lines of the soft
sinuous body, were an invitation to forget all charms but hers.
He understood that she was throwing out her wiles, consciously or
unconsciously, to strike out from him a denial that would convince her.
His mounting vanity drove away his anger. He forgot everything but
her sheathed loveliness, the enticement of this lovely creature whose
smoldering eyes invited. Crossing the room, he stood behind her divan
and looked down at her with his hands on the back of it.

"Can a man care much for two women at the same time?" he asked in a low
voice.

She laughed with slow mockery.

Her faint perfume was wafted to his brain. He knew a besieging of the
blood. Slowly he leaned forward, holding her eyes till the mockery faded
from them. Then, very deliberately, he kissed her.

"How dare you!" she voiced softly in a kind of wonder not free from
resentment. For with all her sensuous appeal the daughter of Joe Powers
was not a woman with whom men took liberties.

"By the gods, why shouldn't I dare? We played a game and both of us have
lost. You were to beckon and coolly flit, while I followed safely at a
distance. Do you think me a marble statue? Do you think me too wooden
for the strings of my heart to pulsate? By heaven, my royal Hebe, you
have blown the fire in me to life. You must pay forfeit."

"Pay forfeit?"

"Yes. I'm your servant no longer, but your lover and your master--and I
intend to marry you."

"How ridiculous," she derided. "Have you forgotten Alice?"

"I have forgotten everything but you--and that I'm going to marry you."

She laughed a little tremulously. "You had better forget that too. I'm
like Alice. My answer is, 'No, thank you, kind sir.'"

"And my answer, royal Hebe, is this." His hot lips met hers again in
abandonment to the racing passion in him.

"You--barbarian," she gasped, pushing him away.

"Perhaps. But the man who is going to marry you."

She looked at him with a flash of almost shy curiosity that had the
charm of an untasted sensation. "Would you beat me?"

"I don't know." He still breathed unevenly. "I'd teach you how to live."

"And love?" She was beginning to recover her lightness of tone, though
the warm color still dabbed her cheeks.

"Why not?" His eyes were diamond bright. "Why not? You have never known
the great moments, the buoyant zest of liv