me when I tell you that
I have come here because I love you?"

Aha! A dark suspicion sprang up within him. So this was an attack from
a different quarter! Hitt and Haynerd had invoked her feminine wiles,
eh?

Nonsense! With one blow the unfamiliar sentiment which had been
shedding its influence upon him that morning laid the ugly suspicion
dead at his feet. A single glance into that sweet face turned so
lovingly up to his brought his own deep curse upon himself for his
hellish thought.

"You know," she bubbled, with a return of her wonted airy gaiety, "I
just had to run the gauntlet through guards and clerks and office boys
to get here. Aren't you glad I didn't send in my card? For then you
would have refused to see me, wouldn't you?"

"I would not!" he replied harshly. Then he repented his tone. "If I
had known you were out there," he said more gently, "I'd have sent out
and had you dragged in. I--I have wanted something this morning; and
now I am sure it was--"

"Yes," she interrupted, taking the words out of his mouth, "you wanted
_me_. I knew you would. You see, it's just absolutely impossible to
oppose anybody who loves you. You know, that's the very method Jesus
gave for overcoming our enemies--to love them, just love them to
pieces, until we find that we haven't any enemies at all any more.
Isn't it simple? My! Well, that's the way I've been doing with
you--just loving you."

The man's brows knotted, and his lips tightened. Was this girl
ridiculing him? Or was there aught but the deepest sincerity expressed
in the face from which he could not take his eyes? Impossible! And
yet, did ever human being talk so strangely, so weirdly, as she?

He bent a little closer to her. "Did you say that you loved me?" he
asked. "I thought you looked upon me as a human monster." After all,
there was a note of pathos in the question. Carmen laid her hand upon
his.

"It's the _real_ you that I love," she answered gently. "The monster
is only human thought--the thought that has seemed to mesmerize you.
But you are going to throw off the mesmerism, aren't you? I'll help
you," she added brightly. "You're going to put off the 'old man'
completely--and you're going to begin by opening yourself and letting
in a little love for those poor people down at Avon, aren't you? Yes,
you are!"

At the mention of the people of Avon his face became stern and dark.
And yet she spoke of them alone. She had not mentioned the Beaubien,
Mis