p
breath.

"If you had," he laughed, "I wouldn't have promised. That's a part of
the general contrariness of men--they like to give what they are not
asked for."

"Well, I'll never ask anything of you," she said, smiling.

"Is that because you want to get everything?" he enquired gayly.

A pale flush rose to her forehead, and the glow heightened the singular
illumination which dwelt in her face. "Would the best that you could
give be more than a little?"

"It would be more than a woman ever got on earth."

"Well, I'm not sure that I would accept your valuation," she remarked,
with an effort to keep up the light tone of banter.

"Then make your own," he answered, as he rose from his chair, but his
eyes and the strong pressure of his hand on hers said more than this.

"When I've read through the manuscript I'll talk to you about it," she
observed, as he was leaving "If you really want them published, though,
they must be considerably altered."

"Oh, do it yourself," he returned, with an embarrassed eagerness. "Do
anything you please--put in the literary stuff and all that."

He spoke with an entire unconsciousness of the amount of work he asked
of her, and she liked him the better for the readiness with which he
took for granted that she possessed the patience as well as the will to
serve him.

"Well, we'll talk about it later," she said, and then for the first time
during the conversation she raised upon him, in all its mystery of
suggestion, that subtle fascination of look which he felt at the instant
to be her transcendent if solitary beauty. Through the afternoon he had
waited patiently for this remembered smile--had laid traps for it, had
sought in vain to capture it unawares, and had she been a worldly
coquette bent upon conquest, she could not have used her weapons with a
finer or more decisive effect. After more than two hours in which her
remoteness had both disappointed and irritated him, he went away at last
with her face at its most radiant moment stamped upon his memory.

CHAPTER V

SHOWS THE DANGERS AS WELL AS THE PLEASURES OF THE CHASE

When Kemper looked at his watch on Laura's steps, he found that he had
time only to pay a promised call on Gerty Bridewell before he must hurry
home to get into his dinner clothes. In his pocket, carelessly thrust
there as he left his rooms, was a note from Gerty begging him to drop in
upon her for a bit of twilight gossip; and though the request was