dn't want you to kiss me with that
mouth. Thin, shut lips--smile! Soften and kiss me! Oh, you're so cold,
strange! You chill me!"

"Dear child, I'm badly shaken," I said. "Don't expect me to be natural
yet. There are things you can't guess. So much depended upon--Oh, never
mind! I'll go now. I want to be alone, to think things out. Let me go,
Sally."

She held me only the tighter, tried to pull my face around. How
intuitively keen women were. She felt my distress, and that growing,
stern, and powerful thing I scarcely dared to acknowledge to myself.
Strangely, then, I relaxed and faced her. There was no use trying to
foil these feminine creatures. Every second I seemed to grow farther
from her. The swiftness of this mood of mine was my only hope. I
realized I had to get away quickly, and make up my mind after that what
I intended to do. It was an earnest, soulful, and loving pair of eyes
that I met. What did she read in mine? Her hands left mine to slide to
my shoulders, to slip behind my neck, to lock there like steel bands.
Here was my ordeal. Was it to be as terrible as Steele's had been? I
thought it would be, and I swore by all that was rising grim and cold in
me that I would be strong. Sally gave a little cry that cut like a blade
in my heart, and then she was close-pressed upon me, her quivering
breast beating against mine, her eyes, dark as night now, searching my
soul.

She saw more than I knew, and with her convulsive clasp of me confirmed
my half-formed fears. Then she kissed me, kisses that had no more of
girlhood or coquetry or joy or anything but woman's passion to blind and
hold and tame. By their very intensity I sensed the tiger in me. And it
was the tiger that made her new and alluring sweetness fail of its
intent. I did not return one of her kisses. Just one kiss given
back--and I would be lost.

"Oh, Russ, I'm your promised wife!" she whispered at my lips. "Soon, you
said! I want it to be soon! To-morrow!" All the subtlety, the
intelligence, the cunning, the charm, the love that made up the whole of
woman's power, breathed in her pleading. What speech known to the tongue
could have given me more torture? She chose the strongest weapon nature
afforded her. And had the calamity to consider been mine alone, I would
have laughed at it and taken Sally at her word. Then I told her in
short, husky sentences what had depended on Steele: that I loved the
Ranger Service, but loved him more; that his chara