bare neck, the swell of her beautiful
bosom, the firm contours of her arms from shoulder to elbow. Her skin
was of a clear, golden whiteness, smooth, fine in texture, as that of a
child. Placing her hands on the gilded frame of the mirror, high up on
either side, she observed her face, exquisitely healthful in colour,
even as seen in this mournful, afternoon light. She leaned forward,
gazing intently into her own eyes--meeting in them, as Narcissus in the
surface of the fatal pool, the radiant image of herself. And this
filled her with a certain intoxication, a voluptuous self-love, a
profound persuasion of the power and completeness of her own beauty.
She caressed her own neck, her own lips, with lingering finger-tips.
She bent her bright head and kissed the swell of her cuplike breasts.
Never had she received so entire assurance of the magic of her own
personality.

"It is all--all, as perfect as ever," she exclaimed exultantly. "And
while it remains perfect, it should be made use of."

Helen waved her hand, smiling, to the smiling image in the mirror.

"You and I together--your beauty and my brains--I pit the pair of us
against all mankind! Together we have worked pretty little miracles
before now, causing the proud to lay aside their pride and the godly
their virtue. A man of strange passions shall hardly escape us--nor
shall the mother that bare him escape either."

Her face hardened, her laughing eyes paled to the colour of fine steel.
She lifted the soft-curling hair from off her right temple disclosing a
small, crescent-shaped scar.

"That is the one blemish, and we will exact the price of it--you and
I--to the ultimate _sou_."

Then she moved away, overcome by sudden amusement at her own attitude,
which she perceived risked being slightly comic. Heroics were, to her
thinking, unsuitable articles for home consumption. Yet her purpose
held none the less strongly and steadily because excitement lessened.
She refastened her tea gown, tied the streaming azure ribbons of it,
patted bows and laces into place, walked the length of the room a time
or two to recover her composure, then rang the bell. And, on the
arrival of Charles,--irreproachably correct in dress and demeanour, his
clean-shaven, sharp-featured, rakish countenance controlled to
praiseworthy nullity of expression, she said:--

"The weather is abominable."

The man-servant set down the tray on a little table before her, turned
out the corners of