you are going to
spare me this next week?"

She looked at him with the slight, indulgent smile of a woman realising
and glad to realise her power. To Tallente she had never seemed more
utterly and entirely desirable. It was not for him to know that a
French modiste had woven all the cunning and diablerie of the sex lure
into the elegant shape, the apparent simplicity of the black velvet
which draped her limbs. In some mysterious way, the same spirit seemed
to have entered into Jane herself. The evening had been one of
unalloyed pleasure. She felt the charm of her companion more than ever
before. The pleasant light in her eyes, the courteous, half-mocking
phrases with which, as a rule, she fenced herself about in those moments
when he sought to draw her closer to him, were gone. Her eyes were as
bright as ever, but softer. Her mouth was firm, yet somehow with a
faint, womanly voluptuousness in its sweet curves. The fingers which
lay unresistingly in his hand were soft and warm.

"As much time as you can spare," she promised him. "I thought, though,
that you would be busy tearing Miller bone from bone."

"The game of politics is played slowly," he answered, "sometimes so
slowly that one chafes. Dear Jane, I want to see you all the time. So
much of what is best in me, best and most effective, comes from you."

"If I can help, I am proud," she whispered.

"You help more than you will ever know, more than my lips can tell you.
It is you who have lit the lamp again in my life, you from whom come the
fire and strength which make me feel that I shall triumph, that I shall
achieve the one thing I have set my heart upon."

"The one thing?" she murmured rashly.

"The one thing outside," he answered, "the desire of my brain. The
desire of my heart is here."

She lay in his arms, her lips moved to his and the moments passed
uncounted. Then, with a queer little cry, she stood up, covered her
face for a moment with her hands and then held them both out to him.

"Dear man," she begged, "dearest of all men--will you go now?
To-morrow--whenever you have time--let your servant ring up. I will
free myself from any engagement--but please!"

He kissed her fingers and passed out with a murmured word. He knew so
little of women and yet some wonderful instinct kept him always in the
right path. Perhaps, too, he feared speech himself, lest the ecstasy of
those few moments might be broken.

CHAPTER XVII

This is how a weekly pa