swept on ahead of the storm which was coming up from the sea. Her heart
was hot; no breeze could cool it--nothing but the ice of decision could
drive out the fever that possessed it. Now she was able to reason calmly
with herself and her emotions. She could judge between them. Three
sentences she had heard uttered that day crowded upon each other to be
uppermost: not the weakest of which was one which had fallen from the
lips of Hollingsworth Chase.

"It is impossible--incredible!" she was saying to herself. "I could not
love him like that. I should hate him. God above me, am I not different
from those women whom I have known and pitied and despised? Am I not
different from Guelma von Herrick? Am I not different from Prince
Henri's wife? Ah, and they loved, too! And is _he_ not different from
those other men--those weak, unmanly men, who came into the lives of
those women? Ah, yes, yes! He _is_ different."

She sat and stared out over the black sea, lighted fitfully by the
distant lightning. There, she pronounced sentence upon him--and herself.
There was no place for him in her world. He should feel her disdain--he
should suffer for his presumption. Presumption? In what way had he
offended? She put her hands to her eyes but her lips smiled--smiled with
the memory of the kiss she had returned!

"What a fool! What a fool I am," she cried aloud, springing up
resolutely. "I _must_ forget. I told him I couldn't, but I--I can." Half
way across the room she stopped, her hands clenched fiercely. "If--if
Karl were only such as he!" she moaned.

[Illustration: 'No' she said to herself, 'I told him I was keeping them
for him.']

She went to her dressing table and resolutely unlocked one of the
drawers, as one would open a case in which the most precious of
treasures was kept. A cautious, involuntary glance over her shoulder,
and then she ran her hand into the bottom of the drawer.

"It was so silly of me," she muttered. "I shall not keep them for him."
The drawer was partly filled with cigarettes. She took one from among
the rest and placed its tip in her red lips, a reckless light in her
eyes. A match was struck and then her hand seemed to be in the clutch of
some invisible force. The light flickered and died in her fingers. A
blush suffused her face, her eyes, her neck. Then with a guilty, shamed,
tender smile she dropped the cigarette into the drawer. She turned the
key.

"No," she said to herself, "I told him that I w