how I loathed them! What a weariness of the
heart they were, those frozen people! Then came you--Storri!"

The San Reve's gray-green eyes burned with white fire. She got up from
the couch where she had lain curled like a tawny lioness.

"Yes; you came!" purred the San Reve, and she stooped and kissed Storri
with her fierce lips. "Then for the first time I loved."

The San Reve recurled herself on the couch. Storri, who had met her kiss
valorously, considered whether he might not please her by solicitude in
a new direction.

"There is one thing, my San Reve," he observed, a show of feeling in his
words. "Why do you tie yourself to that draughting? It grieves your
Storri! Am I a pauper that my San Reve should work? Is Storri so miserly
that the idol of his heart must be a slave?"

The San Reve shook her head.

"I must have something to do," she explained, a half-smile parting her
rose-red lips. "I am like those poor rats of which my father told me who
must gnaw and gnaw and forever gnaw to wear away their teeth, which
otherwise would grow and kill them. No, I like my work; let me alone
with it."

Storri tossed his hand and shrugged his shoulders in mute resignation
and reproof. His San Reve would work; he consented, while he deprecated
her so mad resolve.

"Let us return to our first concern," said the San Reve.

Storri quaked; he could follow her trail of thought by mental smell as
the hound follows the fox.

"Storri, tell me; do you love this Miss Harley?"

"My San Reve, how can you ask? Look in the mirror! No, I do not love
Miss Harley."

The San Reve toyed with her cigarette. Storri, thinking on escape, arose
to go. He stepped into the hallway for his coat and hat. Then he
returned, and, giving his hand to the reclining San Reve, drew her to
her feet. Storri, about to go, was beaming; the kiss he printed lightly
on the San Reve's lips spoke of a heart relieved. The San Reve herself
was amiably placid; her anger apparently had died with her doubts.

"And you do not love Miss Harley?"

"No; I swear by my mother's grave!"

"By your mother's grave!" Then, voice deep as the mellow pipe of an
organ: "Storri, you lie!"

Storri, aghast, was surprised into his usual defense of bluster. He
started to bully; the San Reve raised her shapely hand.

"Storri, let me show you." The San Reve took from the drawer of a
cabinet a beautiful pistol. She partly raised the hammer and buzzed the
liberated cylinder. It ga