of the creases
than you know."

He stayed her by a wistful, longing, and half-boyish smile.

"Say," he said, "you see you didn't run quick enough, and now I'm going
to ask you something. You must have seen a good deal of women as well
as men in your calling."

"Yes, I have."

"Seen them with their masks off?"

"Yes."

"What does love count for in the big hours of life? Does it stand
everything, anything?"

Priscilla felt her throat contract. She longed to say something that
would reach Huntter without arousing his suspicions.

"No; love--at least, woman's love, doesn't stand everything--always."

"What doesn't it stand? The essence, I mean."

"It doesn't stand unfair play! Women understand fair play and for
it would die. They may not say much, but--they never forgive
being--tricked."

"Oh! of course. How graphic you are, Miss Glynn. You sound as if we
were discussing a game of--of tennis or bridge. Gentlemen do not trick
ladies." He frowned a bit.

"Don't they, Mr. Huntter?"

"Certainly not! What I meant was this: You seem, for a trained woman,
very human and--and--well, what shall I say?--observing and rather
a--thoroughbred. If _you_ loved, now, loved really, is there anything you
would not forgive a man? That is, if his love for you was the biggest
thing in his life?"

Priscilla stood quite still and looked at the pale, handsome face on the
pillow.

"My love--yes; my love could and would forgive anything, if it related
only to--to--the man I loved and--me!"

The frown deepened on Huntter's face; he turned uneasily.

"After all," he muttered, "a man and woman see things so differently.
There is no use!"

"I wonder--if things would not seem plainer if they saw them--together?"

But Priscilla saw she had gone too far. The whimsical mood in Huntter had
passed. He was himself again, and she was his nurse--his nurse who knew
too much! More fretfully than he had ever spoken to her, he said:

"I wish to be alone, Miss Glynn."

Priscilla passed out, leaving the door between the rooms ajar, and lay
down upon the couch.

To Doctor Hapgood she was a machine merely; an easy-running one, a
dependable one, but none the less a machine. To Huntter, shut away from
society, gregarious, friendly, and kindly, she had meant much more. Her
recent experience abroad, with all the exquisite touches of human
interest and uplift, had left her peculiarly sensitive to her present
environment.

She liked the man in