I fail to see it."

"Can't you see that we must at once announce our engagement?"

The girl's lips curled with the faintest suggestion of sarcasm.

"I don't see it at all. You may be a good lawyer, but I fail to follow
your logic."

Stuart rose with a gesture of anger.

"Come to the point, Nan. Let's not beat the devil around the stump any
longer. You know as well as I do that you've been trying to flirt with
this little insect----"

"Trying to flirt?"

"Yes."

"Trying? Don't you think I could if I wished without bungling the
effort? What a poor opinion you hold of my talent."

"You know in your heart of hearts you despise Bivens."

"On the contrary, I vastly admire him. The man who can enter with his
handicap this big heartless city and successfully smash the giants who
oppose him is not an insect. I'd rather call him a hero. All women
admire success."

"I see," Stuart replied with suppressed fury, "you enjoy your
conquest."

"And why not?" she drawled, with lazy indifference.

"It's disgusting!"

Nan fixed her dark eyes on Stuart.

"How dare you use such a word to me?"

"Because it's true and you know it."

"True or false, you can't say it"--she rose deliberately--"you may go
now!"

"Forgive me, dear," Stuart stammered in a queer muffled voice. "I
didn't mean to hurt you. I was mad with jealousy."

"You may go," was the hard even answer.

"I can't go like this, dearest," he pleaded. "You must forgive me--you
must! Look at me!"

She turned slowly, stared him full in the face for a moment without the
quiver of an eyelid, her fine figure tense, erect, cold, as she quietly
said:

"You are tiring me, Jim."

For an instant an impulse of overwhelming anger mastered him. He
returned her look with one of concentrated rage and their eyes met in
the first supreme clash of wills. For a moment he saw the world red,
and caught in its glare something he had never seen in Nan before, a
conscious cruelty and a joy in her power that was evil--a cruelty that
could spring only from the deepest and most merciless self-worship. For
the first time he saw a cold-blooded calculation behind her beautiful
eyes, caught its accent in the richly modulated voice, and felt it in
the smile which showed the white teeth--the smile of a woman who would
pause at nothing to get what she wanted. The old savage impulse to
strangle surged through his veins, and he was startled into the
consciousness of his situation by the f