power and charm, was so far beyond most
women! She was life and truth and ambition incarnate! She was the spirit
of dreams and the breath of idealism and the very soul of love and
longing.

Would she feel insulted, he wondered, had she known he had dared to
compare her, even in his own thoughts, with a king's mistress? He meant
no insult--far from it! But would she have understood it had she known?

Paul fancied that she would.

"They may not have been moral, those women," he thought, "that is, what
the world calls 'moral' in the present day, but they possessed power,
marvellous power, over men and kingdoms. Opal Ledoux was created to
exert power--her very breath is full of force and vitality!"

"Yes," he repeated aloud after due deliberation, "I'll risk the bad luck
if you'll be good tome!"

"Am I not?"

"Not always."

"Well, I will be to-day. See! I have a new book--a sad little
love-tale, they say--just the thing for two to read at sea," and with a
heightened color she began to read.

She had pulled her deck-chair forward, until she sat in a flood of
sunshine, and the bright rays, falling on her mass of rich brown hair,
heightened all the little glints of red-gold till they looked like
living bits of flame. Oh the vitality of that hair! the intense glow of
those eyes in whose depths the flame-like glitter was reflected as the
voice, too, caught fire from the fervid lines!

Soon the passion and charm of the poem cast its spell over them both as
they followed the fate of the unhappy lovers through the heart-ache of
their evanescent dream.

Their eyes met with a quick thrill of understanding.

"It is--Fate, again," Paul whispered. "Read on, Opal!"

She read and again they looked, and again they understood.

"I cannot read any more of it," she faltered, a real fear in her voice.
"Let us put it away."

"No, no!" he pleaded. "It's true--too true. Read on, please, dear!"

"I cannot, Paul. It is too sad!"

"Then let me read it, Opal, and you can listen!"

And he took the book gently from her hand, and read until the sun was
smiling its farewell to the laughing waters.

* * * * *

That evening a strong wind was playing havoc with the waves, and the
fury of the maddened spray was beating a fierce accompaniment to their
hearts.

"How I love the wind," said Opal. "More than all else in Nature I love
it, I think, whatever its mood may be. I never knew why--probably
because