lay scattered here
and there, as if thrown carelessly on the ground after perusal. In the
centre was a gilded couch, upholstered in silk, and, as Ingram
mentioned his name, Morgan found himself bowing to the wonderful woman
who reclined on it.

She rose at his greeting, tall and of a gipsy-like brown, and clad in
a straight terra-cotta robe tied in front with a broad, gold girdle,
whose long ends fell floating to the ground. Her feet were sandalled.
Her hair was of a rich, golden red, and somehow showed up in contrast
to the blue grey of her eyes. Her lips were full and of a startling
scarlet, as though they bled. She smiled to Morgan, displaying two
rows of tiny white teeth, and held out to him a long, brown hand.

He took it in his, and the contact set vibrating every chord of his
nature that had been strung up during the past days. At last he was
face to face with the dream-woman who had haunted him, and she was
even as he had seen her! And with all his emotion at this sacred
moment there mingled a sense of pride that his poet's instinct had
divined true.

"I am happy to know you, Mr. Druce. Mr. Ingram has just explained to
me why he has brought you. I am so sorry to be the cause of your
anger."

Her voice was curiously soft, without the least ring or even
suggestion of firmness; warm and yielding as a summer wavelet.

Morgan was somewhat startled at her words; he had almost expected some
strange, rich, musical language to fall from her lips.

Ingram drew over a stool, and Cleo bade him be seated. There was
somewhat of an embarrassed silence. Morgan scarcely knew how to meet
the occasion. It struck him that perhaps he ought to be grateful to
Ingram, for he had now a conviction that the letter of his which Cleo
had had in her possession had really interested her in him--had
touched some sympathetic chord in her--and that the task of
cultivating her would not, for that very reason, prove a difficult
one. He was certain that her nature had much in common with his
own, and that the future which was now to be unrolled was to be a
series of tableaux as charming as this first one.

He felt it incumbent upon him to dispose of the matter for which
nominally he had come, and murmured that Ingram had now sufficiently
shown his good faith, and that he personally was quite satisfied. As
he spoke he looked at Cleo again, and her eyes and lips gleamed at him
strangely. He was aware she wished to say a good deal to him, but