very woman has her remedy----"

"Her _remedy_! What do you mean? You can't pass one of those roses
through the flame of that fire and still have your rose, can you?"

He was silent.

"And that's what happens under _your_ laws, as well as outside of
them. No! I don't love you. Under your law I'd be afraid to marry you.
Under mine I'm deathly afraid.... Because--I know--that where love is
there can be no fear."

"Is that your answer, Palla?"

"Yes, Jim."

CHAPTER IX

He had called her up the following morning from the office, and had
told her that he thought he had better not see her for a while.

And she had answered with soft concern that he must do what he thought
best without considering her.

What other answer he expected is uncertain; but her gentle acquiescence
in his decision irritated him and he ended the conversation in a tone
of boyish resentment.

To occupy his mind there was, that day, not only the usual office
routine, but some extra business most annoying to Sharrow. For Angelo
Puma had turned up again, as shiny and bland as ever, flashing his
superb smile over clerk and stenographer impartially.

So Sharrow shunted him to Mr. Brooke, that sort of property being his
specialty; and Brooke called in Shotwell.

"Go up town with that preposterous wop and settle this business one
way or another, once for all," he whispered. "A crook named Skidder
owns the property; but we can't do anything with him. The office is
heartily sick of both Skidder and Puma; and Sharrow desires to be rid
of them."

Then, very cordially, he introduced Puma to young Shotwell; and they
took Puma's handsome car and went up town to see what could be done
with the slippery owner of the property in question, who was now
permanently located in New York.

On the way, Puma, smelling oppressively aromatic and looking
conspicuously glossy as to hair, hat, and boots, also became
effusively voluble. For he had instantly recognised Shotwell as
the young man with whom that disturbingly pretty girl had been in
consultation in Sharrow's offices; and his mind was now occupied
with a new possibility as well as with the property which he so
persistently desired to acquire.

"With me," he said in his animated, exotic way, and all creased with
smiles, "my cinema business is not business alone! No! It is Art! It
is the art hunger that ever urges me onward, not the desire for
commercial gain. For me, beauty is ever first; the box-