nce of the jungle queen on a prey quest.

"No reason except your contract entered into in all lawfulness,"
answered Mr. Godfrey Vandeford. "You know what the Courts are, and if
you like I'll meet you there and fight it out instead of by these
sounding sea waves in this delicious moonlight. Come here and kiss me
and do let our lawyers settle it all for us." As he spoke he rose lazily
and attempted to take the taut young cat into a pair of listlessly
desirous arms.

"Not on your life you big loafer, you, just because you put one over me
when I was a starved stage door drab don't think I am that same kind or
that sort of thing goes with me now." She spit the words at him as she
half yielded to his nonchalant embrace and half repulsed it.

"Be accurate, Violet, my dear: did I demand your heart until I had
managed you and my own affairs to the point where you could buy
Highcliff or any other trifles you wanted? There are other ladies to
love in the world besides you, aren't there? There are other gentlemen
besides me and you've had five years--and a wide hunting grounds. I've
got you under only one contract--business and not--pleasure."

"God, I don't know whether I love or hate you most," were the words of
the conciliating purr that he got as she turned to put herself back
under his caressing.

"Hate, I wager," he laughed softly, as he drew away from her and seated
himself on the railing of the veranda which hung out over the old ocean
so that its hungry waves seemed to be leaping up to engulf him. The gray
peaks and gable of the Hawtry cottage massed themselves back of him and
in the silvering moonlight he looked like a white eagle perched on an
eyrie.

"Don't make me play that play; give me over to Weiner," the star of many
such an encounter as well of "Dear Geraldine" coaxed, as she followed
him and put bare, white, glistening arms around his neck and attempted
to draw his head down against a bosom that still tossed with the storm
of anger that she had put out of voice and face. "You know how last year
nobody could get a theatre for love or money, and the producers who
owned theatres put on all the plays and coined money. It will be worse
next year. You have no theatre and Weiner has three. He offers to let us
open the New Carnival. It'll be a sure thing; while your play will have
to take its chance for a New York theatre and maybe get none. Please,
Godfrey!"

"Well, you see I had agreed to let Dennis Farraday in