arthrug, the white fur boa slipped from
her throat, and he saw "the necklace of Venus" above the string of opals
that edged her collarless lace blouse.

"On the contrary I admire you very much when you are in a good humour,"
he observed in his genial raillery.

"Then you thought I had a temper?"

He laughed softly, as if at a returning recollection. "A perfectly
artistic one," he answered.

Her annoyance disappeared beneath his gaze, and the smile he had but
half forgotten--a faint sweet ripple of expression, which seemed less
the result of an inner working of intelligence than of some outward
fascination in the curve of mouth and chin--hovered, while he watched
her attentively, upon her bright red lips. In the making of her the soul
he recognised had dissolved into the senses; and yet the accident of her
one exquisite gift had conferred upon her the effect, if not the quality
of genius. Because of the voice in her throat she appeared to stand
apart by some divine election of nature.

"I believe I did slap your face once," she confessed, laughing, "but I
begged your pardon afterward--and you must admit that you were sometimes
trying."

"Perhaps--but what's the use of bringing all this up now? It's well
over, isn't it?"

"Isn't it?" she repeated softly; and he had an odd impression that her
voice was melting into liquid honey. The thought made him laugh aloud
and at the sound she relapsed quickly into her indifferent attitude.

"Of course, it's over," she resumed promptly. "If it were not over--if I
didn't feel myself entirely safe--do you think that I'd ever dare come
back again?"

The absence of any hint of emotion in her words produced in him an
agreeable feeling of security, and for the first time he went so close
to her that he might almost have touched her hand.

"Safe?" he repeated, smiling, "then were you ever really in danger?"

Her glance puzzled him, and she followed it a moment afterward with a
sentence which had the effect of increasing, rather than diminishing,
the obscurity in which he floundered.

"In danger of losing my head, do you mean?" she asked, "Wasn't that
question answered when I ran away?"

But the next instant she burst into a laugh of ridicule, and threw
herself back into the chair upon the hearthrug, with the particular fall
of drapery by which she delighted the eyes of her audience in the opera
house.

"I asked your man to bring me tea, for I'm famished," she remarked; "do