finished I turned to her with a smile.

"That's the kind of man that Jerry is--harmless, docile and most
agreeable, but let him be aroused--"

I paused, letting the paralipsis finish my suggestion.

She was silent a moment, finally turning to me with a laugh that rang
a little discordantly against the softness of her speech.

"Jerry wouldn't beat _me_, would he, Mr. Canby?"

"I'm sure I haven't the least means of knowing," I replied.

"You are merely warning me, I see. Thanks. But I'm afraid you give me
credit for greater hardihood than I possess. On the whole I think I'm
flattered."

She snipped a bud and put it to her lips as though to conceal a smile,
and then passed me slowly.

"Come, Mr. Canby," she said. "I think it's time we joined the others."

It was. The night was cool, but I was perspiring profusely.

CHAPTER XII

INTRODUCING JIM ROBINSON

Of course, I had made an enemy of the girl and to no purpose. I had
felt her physical attraction, and I knew that only by putting myself
beyond its pale could I be true to my own convictions as to her
venality. She was the kind of woman to whom any man, even such a one
as I, is fish for her net. A girl may whet her appetite by coquetry
and deprave it by flirtation, setting at last such a value upon her
skill at seduction that she counts that day lost in which some male
creature is not brought into subjection to her wiles. As I thought
over the conversation later in the privacy of my bedroom I began to
realize that instead of good I had only done harm. For a warning, such
a futile one as I had given would only inflame a girl like Marcia, and
the suggestion of danger was just the fillip her jaded tastes
required.

It was not long before I had a confirmation of my mistake in judgment.
A week passed, a week of alternate joys and depressions for Jerry,
during which he spoke little to me of the girl. The night after the
dinner at the Manor he had upbraided me for telling Marcia the story
of his bout with Sagorski. He had not cared to tell her of that event,
he said, because he thought it too brutal for the ears of a girl of
her delicate and sensitive nature. The next night he spoke of it
again, but this time without reserve. It seemed that Marcia was very
much interested in his feats of physical strength and hoped that Jerry
would permit her to watch him when he sparred. Of course, he didn't
see why she shouldn't watch him when he sparred if she was reall