ortance to note, however, that later on she pressed her hand to her
lips, and that there were many times during the day when she looked at it
as if it were something unreal and apart from her own physical being.

"Thank heaven he doesn't feel toward me as he did last week," he said
fervently. "I shall never get over that awful moment. I shall never forget
the look of despair that--"

"I know," she interrupted. "I saw it too. But it is gone now, so why make
a ghost of it? Don't let it haunt you, Braden."

"It is easy to say that I shouldn't let it--"

"If you are going to begin your life's work by admitting that you are
thin-skinned, you'll not get very far, my friend," she said seriously.
"Good-bye."

She smiled faintly as she turned away. He was never quite sure whether it
was encouragement or mockery that lay in her dark eyes when she favoured
him with that parting glance. He stood motionless until she disappeared
through the door that opened into the room where George was lying; his
eyes followed her slender, graceful figure until she was gone from sight.
His thoughts leaped backward to the time when he had held that lovely,
throbbing, responsive body close in his arms, to the time when he had
kissed those, sensitive lips and had found warmth and passion in them, to
the time when he had drunk in the delicate perfume of her hair and the
seductive fragrance of her body. That same slender, adorable body had been
pressed close to his, and he had trembled under the enchantment it held.

He went away plagued and puzzled by an annoying question that kept on
repeating itself without answer; was it in his power now to rouse the old
flame in her blood, to revive the tender fires that once consumed her
senses when he caressed her? Would she be proof against him if he set out
to reconquer? She seemed so serene, so sure of herself. Was it a pose or
had love really died within her?

By no means the least important of the happenings in Simmy's house was the
short but decisive contest that took place between Lutie and Mrs.
Tresslyn. They met first in the sick-room, and the shock was entirely one-
sided. It was George's mother who sustained it. She had not expected to
find the despised "outcast" there. For once her admirable self-control was
near to being shattered. If she had been permitted to exercise the right
of speech at that crucial moment, she would have committed the
irretrievable error of denouncing the brazen creature