reached them softened
by the distance, and then he inquired in a low voice:

"Do you by any miracle of chance remember an injunction I laid upon you
one afternoon by the roadside?"

Mary Burton looked up and answered with a nod of her head. "Does any
woman ever forget her first compliment?"

"What was it?"

"'Wield leniently the dangerous gift of your witchcraft--the--'" She
abruptly broke off in the quotation and found herself coloring like a
schoolgirl, so Jefferson Edwardes took up the injunction where she had
left it incomplete. "The freakish beauty of your perfect, unmatched
eyes," he prompted.

The girl felt a strange flutter in her breast. Just now she had blushed.
What had happened to the poise of her usual self-command? Some influence
was abroad tonight or some hypnotism in those steady eyes that gave her
a sense of vague apprehension. It was an apprehension though that
thrilled her strangely with a welcome fear--and a promise. Tides were
stirring that were all new tides. It was as though marvels were
possible. She heard him saying again as he had said once before, "You
are as beautiful as starlight on water."

"So was Cleopatra, my friend. So was Helen of Troy. So were ... Circe
and Faustina."

"But they," he laughed, "did not wield kindly the power of their eyes."

Mary Burton winced, then she turned and faced him. Her voice trembled.

"Why did I have to meet you tonight? It isn't fair! They have schooled
my brain into every useless vanity. They have fed my selfishness until
it has strangled my heart. Never until today did I face the truth. All
afternoon I've been sitting alone--hating myself. I am nothing but an
artificial little flirt, and I have not obeyed your injunction." She
paused, then hurried on with the forced manner of one resolved upon full
confession! "Perhaps so far I've hurt only myself--but I've done
that--mortally. Then you come and I learn that you've woven an illusion
about me--and I destroy it."

Jefferson Edwardes smiled in the dark, but spoke gravely.

"You call yourself an artificial little flirt. You haven't flirted with
me. Why?"

"With you I have talked ten minutes." She laughed suddenly as though at
some absurd thought. "Besides, did any woman ever flirt with you? Can
one lie to eyes that see through one?"

"My eyes do see something," he said. "They see that you have never had a
chance to be your real self. You have been surrounded by flatterers and
sycophants, whe