suddenly and crossed out of the room. Saxon had
not failed to note the litheness and grace in that lean and withered
body. She watched for Mrs. Higgins' return, and knew that the litheness
and grace had not been imagined.

"Scarcely have I told you the first letter in love's alphabet," said
Mercedes Higgins, as she reseated herself.

In her hands was a tiny instrument, beautifully grained and richly
brown, which resembled a guitar save that it bore four strings. She
swept them back and forth with rhythmic forefinger and lifted a voice,
thin and mellow, in a fashion of melody that was strange, and in a
foreign tongue, warm-voweled, all-voweled, and love-exciting. Softly
throbbing, voice and strings arose on sensuous crests of song, died away
to whisperings and caresses, drifted through love-dusks and twilights,
or swelled again to love-cries barbarically imperious in which were
woven plaintive calls and madnesses of invitation and promise. It went
through Saxon until she was as this instrument, swept with passional
strains. It seemed to her a dream, and almost was she dizzy, when
Mercedes Higgins ceased.

"If your man had clasped the last of you, and if all of you were known
to him as an old story, yet, did you sing that one song, as I have sung
it, yet would his arms again go out to you and his eyes grow warm with
the old mad lights. Do you see? Do you understand, little wife-woman?"

Saxon could only nod, her lips too dry for speech.

"The golden koa, the king of woods," Mercedes was crooning over the
instrument. "The ukulele--that is what the Hawaiians call it, which
means, my dear, the jumping flea. They are golden-fleshed, the
Hawalians, a race of lovers, all in the warm cool of the tropic night
where the trade winds blow."

Again she struck the strings. She sang in another language, which
Saxon deemed must be French. It was a gayly-devilish lilt, tripping
and tickling. Her large eyes at times grew larger and wilder, and again
narrowed in enticement and wickedness. When she ended, she looked to
Saxon for a verdict.

"I don't like that one so well," Saxon said.

Mercedes shrugged her shoulders.

"They all have their worth, little infant-woman with so much to learn.
There are times when men may be won with wine. There are times when
men may be won with the wine of song, so queer they are. La la, so many
ways, so many ways. There are your pretties, my dear, your dainties.
They are magic nets. No fisherman u