back to the motionless curtains. Whence she had come and how, he
did not know. She was smiling at him and for the first time he saw her
eyes clearly and her dark passionate face and scarlet mouth. He did
not know if she were fifteen or twenty-five. The oval face, the
curving lips were those of a young maiden; her tall, slender figure was
obscured by the loose folds of a snow white garment which fell to the
floor about her; her eyes were just now of any age or ageless,
unfathomable, and, though they smiled, filled with a sort of mockery
which baffled him, confused him, angered him. Upon one point alone
there could be no shadow of doubt; from the top of her proudly lifted
head with its abundance of black hair wherein a jewel gleamed, to the
tips of her exquisite fingers where gleamed many jewels, she was almost
unhumanly lovely. She looked foreign, but he could not guess what land
had cradled her. Mexico? Why Mexico more than another land? It
struck him that she would have seemed alien to any land under the sun.
She might have sprung from some race of beings upon another star.

She had marked the look on his face and in her eyes the laughter
deepened and the mockery stood higher. He frowned and stepped to the
table, tossing down the pad of bank notes.

"That is yours," he told her briefly. "I don't want it and I won't
take it."

Then she, too, came forward to the table. Her left hand took up the
money swiftly, eagerly, it struck him, and thrust it out of sight
somewhere among the folds of her gown. Then finally her laughter
parted her lips and the low music of it filled the room. He knew in a
flash now that she had never meant to allow her winnings to escape her;
that there had been craft in the wording of the message she had sent
him; that all along she counted on his coming to her as he had come.
She sank into the chair nearest her and indicated the other to him.

"If Senor Kendric will be seated," she said lightly, "I should like to
speak with him."

In blazing anger had Kendric come here. Now, seeing clearly just how
she had played with him the blood grew hotter in his face and hammered
at his temples.

"_Senora_," he said crisply, "there need be no talk between you and me
since we have no business together."

"_Senorita_," she corrected him curiously. "I am not married."

"Nor is that a matter for us to discuss." He meant, as he desired, to
be rude to her. "Since it does not interest me."