from life that she knows it only in its elemental freshness--she has a
kind of instinct for truth just as she has for poetry or for beauty, and
our little quibbles, our incessant inanities have never troubled her at
all."

The servant entered with a card as she finished, and after reading the
name she made a quick movement of interest.

"Ask him to come up," she said to the man, adding immediately as Trent
rose to go, "it's Arnold Kemper. Will you stay and see him?"

Trent shook his head, while he held out his hand with a laugh. "I won't
stay," he answered; "I don't like him."

She looked up puzzled, her brows bent in an enquiring frown. "Not like
him! Why, you've never met."

"What has that to do with it?" he persisted lightly. "One doesn't have
to meet a man to hate him."

"One does unless one's a person of stupid prejudices."

"Well, maybe I am," he admitted, "but I have my side."

As the portieres were drawn back, he turned hastily away, to come face
to face with Gerty's caller the next instant upon the threshold. Keen as
his curiosity was he took in, at his brief glance, only that Kemper
presented a bright and brave appearance and walked with a peculiarly
energetic step.

CHAPTER VII

THE IRRESISTIBLE FORCE

Gerty was leaning forward among her cushions and as her visitor
approached she held out her hand, still faintly scented with cigarettes.
"Will you have coffee," she asked, "or shall I ring for tea?"

He sat down in the chair from which Trent had risen and replied with a
gesture of happy physical exhaustion. "Let me have some coffee," he
answered, "I've been out golfing all the morning, and if you don't prove
mentally stimulating I shall fall asleep before you. How many holes do
you think I played to-day?"

Gerty shrugged her shoulders over the little coffee pot. "I don't know
and it doesn't interest me," she retorted. "After six months of Europe
do you still make a god of physical exertion?"

The genial irony of his smile flashed back at her, and his eyes, half
quizzical, half searching, but wholly kind, wandered leisurely down her
slender figure. Even as he lazily sipped his coffee, with his closely
clipped, rather large brown head lying against the chair-back, she was
made to feel, not unpleasantly, the compelling animal magnetism--the
"personal quantity," as she had called it--that lay behind the masculine
bluntness of manner he affected. "Aren't you rather tumbled?" he
enquired, wi