-gray eyes insisted upon seeing Storri
often; and he, putting on a best face, pretended that he loved the San
Reve the better for her jealousy. To keep the peace, he was wont to drop
round to Grant Place three or four times a week.

These concessions to the San Reve and her rather too fervid love would
not get in the way of Storri's dinners at the Harleys'. For a time he
should go there but once a week. When despair had chilled Dorothy to
tameness he would go oftener. Just then he must give her terrors
opportunity to do their freezing work.

Storri could not have told whether he loved or hated Dorothy; he was
only conscious of a fire-fed passion that consumed him. He must possess
her; or, if not that, then he must grind her into the earth. He would
torture her as he was tortured; he would blacken her by blackening Mr.
Harley; with her pride in the dirt, with disgrace upon her, where then
was that man who would wed her? The daughter of a forger--she would
stain the name of wife! Richard might have her then; Storri would give
her to him for a revenge! These were the mutterings of Storri as he went
preyed upon by love and hate at once.

"If you do not love Miss Harley," said the flushed but logical San Reve,
"why do you go there? You say, 'Once a week!' Why once a week? Why once
a month? Why at any time? Storri, you do love her! And you come to me
with lies!" This was on the evening following the scene that gave Storri
such disquiet.

Storri, being spurred, and resolute to silence the San Reve, took that
pertinacious beauty into his confidence, lying wherever it was
inconvenient to tell the truth, and bragging always like a Cheyenne.
Storri strode about the San Reve's rooms and told his tale grandly. His
San Reve must listen; he would show her how a Russian gentleman avenged
himself. He, Storri, hated the Harleys. Mr. Harley had cheated him;
Dorothy had laughed at him; her lover, that Richard, bah! he had even
threatened Storri. Chastise him? Could a nobleman chastise a toad--a
reptile? No; there was a debt due his caste.

Mrs. Hanway-Harley?--a vapid fool! Storri despised her. He despised them
all and hated them all. They had affronted him. And for those injuries
done his pride he would punish and spare not. He, Storri, would bring
sorrow and shame to them; he would mark their lives with black.

Being launched, Storri drew great joy from the rehearsal of what griefs
he had devised against the Harleys. To prove his o