amp would set her vivid dress on fire and light the jewels
at her throat and hair. She knew her clear skin, dark hair, and eyes
would bear the startling contrast, and how her white shoulders gleamed
from the crimson velvet. She knew how to arrange the flaming scarf of
gauze deftly about those white shoulders so that it would reveal more
than it concealed.

The young man lingered unaccountably. He had a sense of leaving
something behind him. Almost he hesitated as she came forward to greet
him, and looked back as if to rid himself of some obligation. Then she
put her bits of confiding hands out to him and smiled that wistful,
engaging smile that would have been worth a fortune on the screen.

He thrilled with wonder over her delicate, dazzling beauty; and felt the
luxury of the room about him, responding to its lure.

"So dandy of you to come to me when you are so busy after your long
illness." Her voice was soft and confiding, its cadences like soothing
music. She motioned him to a chair. "You see, I wanted to have you all
to myself for a little while, just to tell you how perfectly fine you
were at that awful fire."

She dropped upon the couch drawn out at just the right angle from the
fire and settled among the cushions gracefully. The flicker of the
firelight played upon the jeweled combs and gleamed at her throat. The
little pointed slippers cozily crossed looked innocent enough to have
been meant for the golden street. Her eyes looked up into his with that
confiding lure that thrills and thrills again.

Her voice dropped softer, and she turned half away and gazed pensively
into the fire on the hearth. "I wouldn't let them talk to me about it.
It seemed so awful. And you were so strong and great."

"It was nothing!" He did not want to talk about the fire. There was
something incongruous, almost unholy, in having it discussed here. It
jangled on his nerves. For there in front of him in the fireplace burned
a mimic pit like the one into which the martyr Steve had fallen; and
there before him on the couch sat the girl! What was there so familiar
about her? Ah! now he knew. The Scarlet Woman! Her gown was an exact
reproduction of the one the great actress had worn on the stage that
night. He was conscious of wishing to sit beside her on that couch and
revel in the ravishing color of her. What was there about this room
that made all his pulses beat?

Playfully, skilfully, she led him on. They talked of the dances