roat! He did not do any of the thrilling but uncomfortable things done
by the usual rejected lover in the average novel--_but he came back
to me!_ Once more Gerome Meadows was my recognized lover, and the
people--the fickle people--began to whisper it about (greatly to my
satisfaction), that perhaps this very uncertain Mr. Meadows had always
loved me from the time his sister Kate and myself were school-girls
together. And furthermore, he had for a while yielded to the manifold
fascinations of that devilish brown-eyed beauty. In fact, he himself
told me a goodly number of just such little speeches; discoursed on the
difference between real love and mere fascination. He told me that I was
the only woman he ever could really love, and that he had for me a pure
and warm affection. Ah! how sweet were those declarations to my ear. But
not to my heart--it was closed against him.

I was not the woman he had known and halfway loved before--for I had
eagerly tasted deep and long of the Egyptian flesh-pots, and I refused
any other kind of social sustenance. I allowed him to believe that his
tardy return had routed all rivals from the field. I forced him to fancy
me to be so different from _that other woman_. I was, in truth, a
cool, quiet reaction. I coaxed him into believing me to be full of a
gentle, womanly purity. I made him blind to the fact that I was a
worldly woman, conscious of and ready to unhesitatingly use my
worldliness. I measured my powers aright--I could at my own sweet will
allow him, force him, coax him, make him _do any thing_. I cunningly
wove a web in and around the heart of Gerome Meadows--his rejected, torn
and dejected heart. I gently soothed him into not quite a forgetfulness,
yet a strong and healthful calm. He was grateful. Reactions are always
dangerous; he wondered why he had not known me before as he knew me
then. And while he wondered I charmed him into a new love fever. It was
almost a touch of real passion. It was a skillful drawing together of
the scattered ligaments of that other and violently broken love. I had
labored hard, and not altogether in vain. He was mine for the taking.
Would I take him?

We stood together late one afternoon in a rich oriel window which
overhung the street. We were silent. The rustle of the light summer
drapery filled the air with a faint but melodiously tender undertone.
We looked out of the broad open window down the street. It was near the
close of a superb summer'