rt. As you care for
neither, it should be a matter of indifference whose property you
become."

The blood burned redly under the girl's brown skin. "No one but a woman
could know how unforgivable is that insult," she said. Then, with a
suddenly conceived appeal to the man himself:

"But why a bargain at all? You have the strength, the courage, the
brains--why chaffer when you have but to strike once to win all? You
stand between Boris and Ulick; crush them both in a single embrace and
take their birthright of power."

"Bah!" said the Doomsman, contemptuously. "Do you think that the mere
possession of the wolf-skin is the object of the hunt? It is the game
that amuses me and not the final distribution of the stakes. The game, I
say, and it happens to suit my humor to play it in this particular way.
You are simply a piece on the board, and I may win with you or lose with
you, or conclude to throw you back in the box without playing you at
all--just as it pleases me."

"The means are at least nobler than the end," retorted the girl. "A
lofty ambition, truly, to stand behind a screen and pull the strings of
a puppet, who in turn lords it over a handful of rick burners and cattle
reivers. Even my uncle Hugolin, Councillor Primus of Croye, cuts a
better figure when, clad in his state robe of silver-fox fur, he
presides over his parliament of shopkeepers."

"Granted," returned Quinton Edge, "but one and all dance together when I
choose to pipe. Is it such a contemptible thing to rule a small world,
if, indeed, it be the world? I take all that there is to be taken. Could
Alexander or Caesar do more?"

"I am beginning to comprehend," she said, slowly. "An ambition that
confessedly overleaps all bounds is at least not an ignoble one."

He turned and searched her eyes.

"You will play the game with me?"

"No."

"Yet a moment ago you were considering it--the possibility, I mean."

"For the moment--yes. After three months of Arcadia House dulness
almost any amusement would seem worth while. But, frankly speaking, it
is the nature of the risk that appalls me. I cannot afford to lose my
stake nor even to adventure it."

"To speak plainly?"

"Well, then, you contribute to the common capital but one thing--your
brains. Later on, if the play goes against us, you may have to throw on
the table your liberty, and, in the last extremity, your life. But that
is the utmost limit of your losses. I, on the contrary, must contrib