d at her feet again. It was the only thing that would satisfy
this insatiable longing in her, this wounded pride of self.

When she was dressed she stood before the mirror and surveyed herself. She
knew she was beautiful, and she defied the glass to tell her anything
else. She raised her chin in haughty challenge to the unseen David to
resist her charms. She would bring him low before her. She would make him
forget Marcia, and his home and his staid Puritan notions, and all else he
held dear but herself. He should bend and kiss her hand as Harry had done,
only more warmly, for instinctively she felt that his had been the purer
life and therefore his surrender would mean more. He should do whatever
she chose. And her eyes glowed with an unhallowed light.

She had chosen to array herself regally, in velvet, but in black, without
a touch of color or of white. From her rich frock her slender throat rose
daintily, like a stem upon which nodded the tempting flower of her face.
No enameled complexion could have been more striking in its vivid reds and
whites, and her mass of gold hair made her seem more lovely than she
really was, for in her face was love of self, alluring, but heartless and
cruel.

The boy found David, as Kate had thought he would, in one of the quieter
hostelries where men of letters were wont to stop when in New York, and
David read the letter and came at once. She had known that he would do
that, too. His heart beat wildly, to the exclusion of all other thoughts
save that she was in trouble, his love, his dear one. He forgot Marcia,
and the young naval officer, and everything but her trouble, and before he
had reached her house the sorrow had grown in his imagination into some
great danger to protect her from which he was hastening.

She received him alone in the room where Harry Temple had first called,
and a moment later Harry himself came to knock and enquire for the health
of Mistress Leavenworth, and was told she was very much engaged at present
with a gentleman and could not see any one, whereupon Harry scowled, and
set himself at a suitable distance from the house to watch who should come
out.

David's face was white as death as he entered, his eyes shining like dark
jewels blazing at her as if he would absorb the vision for the lonely
future. She stood and posed,--not by any means the picture of broken sorrow
he had expected to find from her note,--and let the sense of her beauty
reach him. The