ber Combine, she returned to the charge.

"You seem to value life in terms of profit and loss," she said. "I
wonder if you have ever known love."

The shaft went home. He had not kissed his woman. His marriage had been
one of policy. It had saved the estate in the days when he had been
almost beaten in the struggle to disencumber the vast holdings Isaac
Travers' wide hands had grasped. The girl was a witch. She had probed an
old wound and made it hurt again. He had never had time to love. He had
worked hard. He had been president of the chamber of commerce, mayor of
the city, state senator, but he had missed love. At chance moments he
had come upon Polly, openly and shamelessly in her father's arms, and he
had noted the warmth and tenderness in their eyes. Again he knew that he
had missed love. Wanton as was the display, not even in private did he
and Mary so behave. Normal, formal, and colourless, she was what was to
be expected of a loveless marriage. He even puzzled to decide whether
the feeling he felt for her was love. Was he himself loveless as well?

In the moment following Polly's remark, he was aware of a great
emptiness. It seemed that his hands had grasped ashes, until, glancing
into the other room, he saw Tom asleep in the big chair, very grey and
aged and tired. He remembered all that he had done, all that he
possessed. Well, what did Tom possess? What had Tom done?--save play
ducks and drakes with life and wear it out until all that remained was
that dimly flickering spark in a dying body.

What bothered Frederick in Polly was that she attracted him as well as
repelled him. His own daughter had never interested him in that way.
Mary moved along frictionless grooves, and to forecast her actions was
so effortless that it was automatic. But Polly! many-hued,
protean-natured, he never knew what she was going to do next.

"Keeps you guessing, eh?" Tom chuckled.

She was irresistible. She had her way with Frederick in ways that in
Mary would have been impossible. She took liberties with him, cosened
him or hurt him, and compelled always in him a sharp awareness of her
existence.

Once, after one of their clashes, she devilled him at the piano, playing
a mad damned thing that stirred and irritated him and set his pulse
pounding wild and undisciplined fancies in the ordered chamber of his
brain. The worst of it was she saw and knew just what she was doing. She
was aware before he was, and she made him aware