is
brutal story. She had often told herself that his lean, big-boned lower
jaw was like his bull-dog's, but tonight his face made Caesar's most
savage and determined expression seem an affectation. Now she was looking
at the man he really was. Nobody's eyes had ever defied her like this.
They were searching her and seeing everything; all she had concealed from
Livingston, and from the millionaire and his friends, and from the
newspaper men. He was testing her, trying her out, and she was more ill
at ease than she wished to show.

"That's quite a thrilling story," she said at last, rising and winding
her scarf about her throat. "It must be getting late. Almost every one
has gone."

They walked down the Avenue like people who have quarrelled, or who wish
to get rid of each other. Hedger did not take her arm at the street
crossings, and they did not linger in the Square. At her door he tried
none of the old devices of the Livingston boys. He stood like a post,
having forgotten to take off his hat, gave her a harsh, threatening
glance, muttered "goodnight," and shut his own door noisily.

There was no question of sleep for Eden Bower. Her brain was working like
a machine that would never stop. After she undressed, she tried to calm
her nerves by smoking a cigarette, lying on the divan by the open window.
But she grew wider and wider awake, combating the challenge that had
flamed all evening in Hedger's eyes. The balloon had been one kind of
excitement, the wine another; but the thing that had roused her, as a
blow rouses a proud man, was the doubt, the contempt, the sneering
hostility with which the painter had looked at her when he told his
savage story. Crowds and balloons were all very well, she reflected, but
woman's chief adventure is man. With a mind over active and a sense of
life over strong, she wanted to walk across the roofs in the starlight,
to sail over the sea and face at once a world of which she had never been
afraid.

Hedger must be asleep; his dog had stopped sniffing under the double
doors. Eden put on her wrapper and slippers and stole softly down the
hall over the old carpet; one loose board creaked just as she reached the
ladder. The trap-door was open, as always on hot nights. When she stepped
out on the roof she drew a long breath and walked across it, looking up
at the sky. Her foot touched something soft; she heard a low growl, and
on the instant Caesar's sharp little teeth caught her ankle and