adside. If you are not the woman of my visions, you can be, and I mean
that you shall be. You are a woman trained in the ways of your world. If
you could help it, you would not let a man take your hands in his, like
this, at a first meeting--would you?"

She shook her head, but her hands lay as motionless as though their
nerves were dead. She could feel the throbbing pulses of his fingers and
suddenly he bent forward and pressed his lips to hers, while she stood
amazed and unresisting. "Or kiss your lips--like this--would you? With
women I am timid, because I have never before been a lover. I could not
do what I am doing unless something stronger than myself were acting
through me. It is the chemistry of souls. It is written." He let his
arms fall at his sides.

Mary Burton pressed her temples with her fingers. Her knees felt weak
and she stood unsteadily on her feet. The man passed a supporting arm
about her waist. Finally, she drew herself up and laughed with a
nervousness that bordered on the hysterical.

"I wonder," she said brokenly; and paused only to repeat again: "I
wonder whether it's the great adventure I've dreamed of--or just
moon-madness? Ought I to be very angry?"

"You will have time to decide," he told her. "What I have said and done
I shall say and do again--often."

"It's strange," she murmured as though talking to herself. "I thought I
understood men. I'm not a schoolgirl any more. Yet I'm as bewildered as
though you were the first man who ever said, 'I love you.'"

"Thank God for that."

She turned and laid a hand on his arm. Her voice came with a musical
vehemence.

"If I do come to love you, I think it will be heaven or hell to me. I'm
not going to be angry until I've thought about it--and thought hard, and
I'm not going to love you unless you make me. Come, let's go back."

As they turned into the path toward the house, she broke irrelevantly
into laughter.

"When you lighted your match--and burned your fingers--what did you
think of my pearls?"

"I didn't see them," he promptly replied. "Were you wearing pearls?"

Confused by the sudden and marvelous consciousness of all life being
changed at a stroke, of doors that had swung wide between all the old
and all the new, Mary Burton walked as in a daze, her fingers toying
with the gems about her neck. But before she had taken many steps the
man laid a hand on her arm and halted her. When she turned he caught her
by her shoulders and hi