t at all. Did you
expect that I should tell you just what I saw in the clouds that night?"

"No," he answered, "not exactly. I have spoken of my first interest in
you only. There are other things. I told a lie about the bracelet and I
followed you out of the boarding-house and I brought you here, for some
other for quite a different reason."

"Tell me what it was," she demanded.

"I do not know it myself," he declared solemnly. "I really and honestly
do not know it. It is because I hoped that it might come to me while
we were together, that I am here with you at this moment. I do not like
impulses which I do not understand."

She laughed at him a little scornfully.

"After all," she said, "although it may not have dawned upon you yet,
it is probably the same wretched reason. You are a man and you have the
poison somewhere in your blood. I am really not bad-looking, you know."

He looked at her critically. She was a little over-slim, perhaps, but
she was certainly wonderfully graceful. Even the poise of her head, the
manner in which she leaned back in her chair, had its individuality. Her
features, too, were good, though her mouth had grown a trifle hard. For
the first time the dead pallor of her cheeks was relieved by a touch of
color. Even Tavernake realized that there were great possibilities about
her. Nevertheless, he shook his head.

"I do not agree with you in the least," he asserted firmly. "Your looks
have nothing to do with it. I am sure that it is not that."

"Let me cross-examine you," she suggested. "Think carefully now. Does it
give you no pleasure at all to be sitting here alone with me?"

He answered her deliberately; it was obvious that he was speaking the
truth.

"I am not conscious that it does," he declared. "The only feeling I am
aware of at the present moment in connection with you, is the curiosity
of which I have already spoken."

She leaned a little towards him, extending her very shapely fingers.
Once more the smile at her lips transformed her face.

"Look at my hand," she said. "Tell me--wouldn't you like to hold it just
for a minute, if I gave it you?"

Her eyes challenged his, softly and yet imperiously. His whole
attention, however, seemed to be absorbed by her finger-nails. It seemed
strange to him that a girl in her straits should have devoted so much
care to her hands.

"No," he answered deliberately, "I have no wish to hold your hand. Why
should I?"

"Look at me," she