g here
to-night."

"Indeed?" Courteney spoke stiffly. He felt stiff, physically stiff, as
one forcibly awakened from a deep slumber.

The man beside him was still chuckling. "Yes. The little witch! Said
she'd manage it somehow when I told her you weren't taking any. We had a
thousand on it, and the little devil has won, outwitted us both. How in
thunder did she do it? Laid a trap for you; what?"

Courteney did not answer. The stiffness was spreading. He felt as one
turned to stone. Mechanically he yielded to the hand upon his arm, not
speaking, scarcely thinking.

And then--almost before he knew it--he was in her presence, face to face
with the golden vision that had caught and--for a space at least--had
held his heart.

He bowed, still silent, still strangely bound and fettered by the
compelling force.

A hand that was lithe and slender and oddly boyish came out to him. A
voice that had in it sweet, lilting notes, like the voice of a laughing
child, spoke his name.

"Mr. Courteney! How kind!" it said.

As from a distance he heard Grant speak. "Mr. Courteney, allow me to
introduce you--my wife!"

There was a dainty movement like the flash of shimmering wings. He
looked up. She had thrown back her veil.

He gazed upon her. "Rosemary!"

She looked back at him above the roses with eyes that were deeply
purple--as the depths of the sea. "Yes, I am Rosemary--to my friends,"
she said.

Ellis Grant was laughing still, in his massive, contented way. "But to
her lover," he said, "she is--and always has been--Rosa Mundi."

Then speech came back to Courteney, and strength returned. He held
himself in firm restraint. He had been stricken, but he did not flinch.

"Your husband?" he said.

She indicated Grant with a careless hand. "Since yesterday," she said.

He bowed to her again, severely formal. "May I wish you joy?" he said.

There was an instant's pause, and in that instant something happened.
She had not moved. Her eyes still met his own, but it was as if a veil
had dropped between them suddenly. He saw the purple depths no more.

"Thank you," said Rosa Mundi, with her little girlish laugh.

* * * * *

As he strode down the Pier a few minutes later, he likened the scent
of the crushed roses that strewed the way to the fumes of
sacrifice--sacrifice offered at the feet of a goddess who cared for
nothing sacred. Not till long after did he remember the tears that he
had see