rgotten. I came to-day only
to ask the honour of your presence at my first concert."

An impulse to irritate her--to provoke her into an expression of her
hidden violence--succeeded quickly the curiosity she had aroused; and he
felt again the fiendish delight with which, as a savage small boy, he
had prodded the sleeping wild animals in their cages in the park.

"I'm not sure that I can arrange it," he responded, "I may be off on my
honeymoon, you know."

"Ah, yes," she nodded while he saw a perceptible flicker of her heavy
eyelids, "but when, if I'm not impertinent, does the interesting event
take place? I might be able to postpone my concert," she concluded
jestingly.

He shook his head. "You can't do that because I expect it to last
forever."

"One usually does, I believe, but it is easy to miscalculate. Have you a
photograph visible of the lady?"

He shook his head, but with the denial, his glance travelled to a
picture of Laura upon his desk; and crossing the room, she took it up
and returned with it to the firelight, where she dropped upon her knees
in order to study it the more closely.

"Has she money?" was her first enquiry at the end of her examination.

"If she has I am not aware of it," he retorted angrily.

"Well, I wonder what you see in her," she remarked, with her attentive
gaze still upon the picture, "though she looks as if she'd never let a
man go if she once got hold of him."

Her vulgar insolence worked him into an uncontrollable spasm of anger;
and with a smothered oath he wrenched the photograph from her and flung
it into the open drawer of his desk.

"She is too sacred to me to be made the subject of your criticism," he
exclaimed.

Whether she was frankly offended or unaffectedly amused he could not
tell, but she burst into so musical a laugh that he found himself
listening to it with positive pleasure.

"There! there! don't be foolish--I was only joking," she returned,
"please don't think for one minute that it's worth my while to be
jealous of you."

"I don't think so," he replied, with open annoyance, "but I wish you
wouldn't come here."

She had taken up her fur and stood now wrapping it about her throat,
while her eyes were fixed upon him with an expression he found it
impossible to read. Was it anger, seduction, passion or disappointment?
Or was it some deeper feeling than he had ever believed it possible for
her face to show?

"It is the last time, I promise you," she