Neither was Dorothy an excuse for his
peculiar state of mind. He was drawn to her with strong protective
yearning. Her childlike beauty pleased him. He wished she were his
daughter, or a little sister to pet and spoil. But it was not for her
sake that he savagely longed to make the mother into something
different, "remolded nearer to his heart's desire." Was it the woman
herself, or her enigmatic dual personality that held him? He wished he
knew. He found his mind divided, his emotions many and at cross
purposes. His keen, almost clairvoyant intuition was at fault for once.
It sent no sure signal through the fog of his troubled heart.

How would it all end? Ah, how would it end? He sensed the situation as
one of climax. It could not quietly dissolve itself and be absorbed in
the sea of time and forgotten commonplace.

As an outlet for his mental discomfort, his restless spirit busied
itself in hating Victor Mahr. He had always disliked the man; now he
malignantly resented his very existence; Mahr became the personification
of the thing he most wished to forget--the victimizing power of the
woman who had enthralled him. Gard had met the one element he could not
control or change--the past; and his conquering soul raged at its own
impotence.

"There shall be no more of this!" he said aloud. "She sha'n't again.
I'll--"

"I'll what?" the demon in his brain jeered at him. "What will you do?
She will not 'be under obligations.' Perhaps, even, she likes her
strange profession; perhaps she finds the delight of battle, that you
know so well, in pitting her wits against the brains of the mighty;
perhaps she has a cynic soul that finds a savage joy in running down the
faults of the seemingly faultless--running them to earth and taking her
profit therefrom. Who are you, Marcus Gard, to cavil at the lust of
conquest--to sneer at the controlling of destinies?"

"I won't be beaten," declared his ego, "even if I have no weapon. I'll
search till I find the way to the citadel, and if there is none open,
I'll smash one through!"

* * * * *

V

"Mrs. Martin Marteen requests the pleasure of Mr. Marcus Gard's company
at dinner"--the usual engraved invitation, with below a girlish scrawl:
"You'll come, won't you? It's my very last dinner before we go
South.--D."

He took a stubby quill, which, for some occult reason, he preferred for
his intimate correspondence, and scribbled: "Of course, lit