ing out in marked and even time, echoed forth like
the sound of clear-toned bells broken through by the singing of birds.
My heart beat furiously, my brain reeled, my senses swam as I felt my
wife's warm breath on my cheek; I clasped her waist more closely, I
held her little gloved hand more firmly. She felt the double pressure,
and, lifting her white eyelids fringed with those long dark lashes that
gave such a sleepy witchery to her eyes, her lips parted in a little
smile.

"At last you love me!" she whispered.

"At last, at last," I muttered, scarce knowing what I said. "Had I not
loved you at first, bellissima, I should not have been to you what I am
to-night."

A low ripple of laughter was her response.

"I knew it," she murmured again, half breathlessly, as I drew her with
swifter and more voluptuous motion into the vortex of the dancers. "You
tried to be cold, but I knew I could make you love me--yes, love me
passionately--and I was right." Then with an outburst of triumphant
vanity she added, "I believe you would die for me!"

I bent over her more closely. My hot quick breath moved the feathery
gold of her hair.

"I HAVE died for you," I said; "I have killed my old self for your
sake."

Dancing still, encircled by my arms, and gliding along like a sea-nymph
on moonlighted foam, she sighed restlessly.

"Tell me what you mean, amor mio," she asked, in the tenderest tone in
the world.

Ah, God! that tender seductive cadence of her voice, how well I knew
it!--how often had it lured away my strength, as the fabled siren's
song had been wont to wreck the listening mariner.

"I mean that you have changed me, sweetest!" I whispered, in fierce,
hurried accents. "I have seemed old--for you to-night I will be young
again--for you my chilled slow blood shall again be hot and quick as
lava--for you my long-buried past shall rise in all its pristine vigor;
for you I will be a lover, such as perhaps no woman ever had or ever
will have again!"

She heard, and nestled closer to me in the dance. My words pleased her.
Next to her worship of wealth her delight was to arouse the passions of
men. She was very panther-like in her nature--her first tendency was to
devour, her next to gambol with any animal she met, though her sleek,
swift playfulness might mean death. She was by no means exceptional in
this; there are many women like her.

As the music of the waltz grew slower and slower, dropping down to a
sweet and pe