for you to see my face,
monsieur!"

"Who is to see it?" he demanded.

"Who but the man I am to marry," she gave distinctly back.

The word hit him like stone.

He was conscious of a shock. Did she intend to rebuke--or to
imply--to question his intention? The steadiness of her low voice
suggested a certain steadiness of design.... He had heard of girls
who knew their own minds ... girls with unexpectedly far-sighted
vision.... Perhaps, poor child, she looked upon him as romantic
escape from all that was restrictive in her life. Secluded women go
fast--when they start.

The devil take him for that kiss!

A somewhat set look upon his thin face guarded the fluctuations of
his soul, but the blood rose strongly under his dark skin.

For a moment he did not venture upon a reply, and in that moment he
was suddenly aware that she had caught his meaning from him--and
that it was a horrible mistake. It was one of those instants of
highly-charged exchanges of meanings whose revelation was as useless
to be denied as powerless to be explained.

Then her words came in tumultuous, passionate refutation of his
thought. "That is what my father had come to tell me--that he had
arranged my marriage. It is a very splendid thing. To a general--a
rich general!"

She had not meant to tell him like that! But for the moment she was
savagely glad to hurl it at him.

He made no answer. His eyes were inscrutably intent. A variety of
things were rearranging themselves in his head.

"You're--you're going to marry him?" he said slowly.

"What else?" But she felt the phrase unfortunate and plunged past
it. "It is not for me to say no, monsieur. It is for my father to
arrange."

"But his indulgence--? You were telling me, you know, that he was so
fond of you. And that you were one of the moderns--the revolting
moderns--"

Jack Ryder's tone was questioningly cynical and its raillery cut
through her brief sham of pride.

"So I thought, too, last night." A tinge of infinite disillusionment
was in her young voice. "But it is not so."

"Then you accept--?"

The shrouded head nodded.

"But you can't want to," he broke out with sudden heat. "You don't
know him at all, do you--this general?"

"Know him? I have never seen his face nor heard his voice--and I
would die first," she added with bitter, helpless fierceness under
her breath.

The veil muffled that from him. "But why--why?" he repeated in an
angrily puzzled way.

She made