"

As he looked at her, smoking daintily in the fling of the fire glow,
every inch the pampered heiress of the ages, his blood quickened to
an appreciation of the sensuous charm of sex she breathed forth so
indifferently. The clinging crepe-de-chine--except in public she did
not pretend even to a conventional mourning for the scamp whose name she
bore lent accent to her soft, rounded curves, and the slow, regular
rise and fall of her breathing beneath the filmy lace promised a perfect
fullness of bust and throat. He was keenly responsive to the physical
allure of sex, and Valencia Van Tyle was endowed with more than her
share of magnetic aura.

"You have expressed yourself. It's like you," he said with finality.

Her tawny eyes met his confident appraisal ironically. "Indeed! You know
then what I am like?"

"One uses his eyes, and such brains as heaven has granted him," he
ventured lightly.

"And what am I like?" she asked indolently.

"I'm hoping to know that better soon--I merely guess now."

"They say all women are egoists--and some men." She breathed her soft
inscrutable ripple of laughter. "Let me hasten to confess, and crave a
picture of myself."

"But the subject deserves an artist," he parried.

"He's afraid," she murmured to the fire. "He makes and unmakes
senators--this Warwick; but he's afraid of a girl."

James lit a fresh cigarette in smiling silence.

"He has met me once--twice--no, three times," she meditated aloud. "But
he knows what I'm like. He boasts of his divination and when one puts
him to the test he repudiates."

"All I should have claimed is that I know I don't know what you are
like."

"Which is something," she conceded.

"It's a good deal," he claimed for himself. "It shows a beginning of
understanding. And--given the opportunity--I hope to know more." He
questioned of her eyes how far he might go. "It's the incomprehensible
that lures. It piques interest and lends magic. Behind those eyelids a
little weary all the subtle hidden meaning of the ages shadows. The gods
forbid that I should claim to hold the answer to the eternal mystery of
woman."

"Dear me! I ask for a photograph and he gives me a poem," she mocked,
touching an electric button.

"I try merely to interpret the poem."

She looked at him under lowered lids with a growing interest. Her
experience had not warranted her in hoping that he would prove worth
while. It would be clear gain if he were to disappoint he