y is punished
proportionately. No art is a harder taskmistress than the art of
dancing."

Magda listened breathlessly. This man understood--oh, he understood!
Then why did he "hate her type of woman"?

Almost as though he had read her thoughts he pursued:

"As a dancer, an artist--I acknowledge the Wielitzska to be supreme. But
as a woman----"

"Yes? As a woman? Go on. What do you know about me as a woman?"

He laughed disagreeably.

"I'd judge that in the making of you your soul got left out," he said
drily.

Magda forced a smile.

"I'm afraid I'm very stupid. Do you mind explaining?"

"Does it need explanation?"

"Oh--please!"

"Then--one of my best pals was a man who loved you."

Magda threw him a glance of veiled mockery from beneath her long white
lids.

"Surely that should be a recommendation--something in my favour?"

His eyes hardened.

"If you had dealt honestly with him, it might have been. But you drew
him on, _made_ him care for you in spite of himself. And then, when
he was yours, body and soul, you turned him down! Turned him
down--pretended you were surprised--you'd never meant anything! All the
old rotten excuses a woman offers when she has finished playing with a
man and got bored with him. . . . I've no place for your kind of woman.
I tell you"--his tone deepening in intensity--"the wife of any common
labourer, who cooks and washes and sews for her man day in, day out,
is worth a dozen of you! She knows that love's worth having and worth
working for. And she works. You don't. Women like you take a man's soul
and play with it, and when you've defiled and defaced it out of all
likeness to the soul God gave him, you hand it back to him and think you
clear yourself by saying you 'didn't mean it'!"

The bitter speech, harsh with the deeply rooted pain and resentment
which had prompted it, battered through Magda's weak defences and found
her helpless and unarmed. Once she had uttered a faint cry of protest,
tried to check him, but he had not heeded it. After that she had
listened with bent head, her breath coming and going unevenly.

When he had finished, the face she lifted to him was white as milk and
her mouth trembled.

"Thanks. Well, I've heard my character now," she said unsteadily. "I--I
didn't know anyone thought of me--like that."

He stared at her--at the drooping lines of her figure, the quivering
lips, at the half-stunned expression of the dark eyes. And suddenly
realis