you," he muttered, "it is you."

"Even so, there let it rest."

"I cannot," he insisted; "I love you." As he spoke he started, startled
at his own temerity. And as her eyelids drooped he tried to catch her
hand again.

"Then, if you love me, say nothing." She had straightened herself and
looked him now in the face. "If the general should even imagine--" A
gesture completed the sentence.

Tancred nodded. He seemed confident and assured. Evidently the general
had aroused no fear in him.

"It was in Mexico," she continued. "Liance was in the cradle. Her
mother"--and Mrs. Lyeth turned her head and looked cautiously
around--"her mother was younger than I am now. She was beautiful, I have
understood; more so even than her daughter. The general suspected that
she was flirting with the Austrian attache. He had him out and shot him.
His wife he drove to suicide. It is only recently I learned this. And
yet it is not for that reason that I fear. I have no intention of
flirting with you; you know that. It is because--because--"

"Don't hunt for a reason. I am willing to be shot."

Mrs. Lyeth hastened to laugh, but her laugh was troubled. It sounded
thin, as forced laughter ever does. She unfurled her fan again, and
agitated it with sudden vigor.

"It may not be," she murmured.

Her voice was so low that even the breeze did not catch it. And now, as
she turned to her companion, it seemed to him that her eyes were
compassionate, sympathetic even, awake to possibilities yet careless of
result.

At the moment there came to Tancred that annoyance which visits us in
dream. Before him was a flower more radiant than any parterre had ever
produced. With a reach of the arm it could be his, but his arm had lost
its cunning. Do what he might, it refused to move. And still the flower
glowed, and still the arm hung pendent and quasi-paralyzed at his side.
It may be--such things have happened--it may be that of the inward
effort Mrs. Lyeth marked some sign. She shut her fan again, and made as
though to rise. But this movement of hers, like the clock in the fable,
must have dissolved the spell. Abruptly Tancred was on his feet.

"One instant," he said. "There, you can give me that. Nay, see, if you
wish to--go."

And at this he stood aside, as though to let her pass. The magnetism,
however, which youth possesses, may have coerced her. In any event she
made no further effort to leave; she sat, her eyes a trifle dilated, a
whiteness