e
very touch of him grew to be hateful. No woman could live with such a
man. By the way, he signed the draft, I suppose?"

Her father handed her a slip of paper, which she looked at and locked in
her drawer.

"Did he make any trouble about it?" she asked.

The professor shivered.

"He refused to sign it," he said, in a low tone, "swore he would never
sign it. Mathers sent me out for a few minutes, made me go into another
room. When I came back, he gave me the draft. I heard him calling out."

"Mathers certainly earns his money," she remarked, drily.

He gazed at her with grudging admiration. This was his daughter, his own
flesh and blood. Back through the years, for a moment, he seemed to see
her, a child with hair down her back, sitting on his knee, listening
to his stories, wondering at the little arts and tricks by which he
had wrested their pennies and sixpennies from a credulous public.
Phrenologist, hypnotist, conjurer--all these things the great Professor
Franklin had called himself. Often, from the rude stage where he had
given his performance, he had terrified to death the women and children
of his audience. It flashed upon him at that moment that never, even in
the days of her childhood, had he seen fear in Elizabeth's face.

"You should have been a man, Elizabeth," he muttered.

She shook her head, smiling as though not ill-pleased at the compliment.

"The power of a man is so limited," she declared. "A woman has more
weapons."

"More weapons indeed," the professor agreed, as his eyes traveled over
the slim yet wonderful perfection of her form, lingered for a moment
at the little knot of lace at her throat, wrestled with the delicate
sweetness of her features, struggling hard to think from whom among his
ancestors could have come a creature so physically attractive.

"More weapons, indeed," he repeated. "Elizabeth, what a gift--what a
gift!"

"You speak," she replied, "as though it were an evil one."

"I was only thinking," he said, "that it seems a pity. You are so
wonderful, we might have found an easier and a less dangerous way to
fortune."

She smiled.

"The Bohemian blood in me, I suppose," she remarked. "The crooked ways
attract, you know, when one has been brought up as I was."

"Your poor mother had no love for them," he reminded her.

"Beatrice has inherited everything that belonged to my mother. I am your
own daughter, father. You ought to be proud of me. But there, I gave you