hing but you, you, _you_! It will never be different: I don't
know why I can't get over it--I only know I can't. You own me; you
burn like a hot coal in my heart. You're through with me, I know.
You drained me dry. You're like a child who eats so heartily of
what he likes that he never touches it again. And I'm a dish
you're sick of. Oh, it's all plain enough, I can tell you. I'm not
exciting any more--no, just a nauseous slave!"

"Do you want people to hear you?" she inquired angrily, for his
voice had risen.

He tempered his tone. "Cora, when you liked me you went a pretty
clipping gait with me," he said, trembling even more than before.
"But you're infinitely more infatuated with this Toreador of a
Corliss than you were with me; you're lost in him; you're slaving
for him as I would for you. How far are you going with----"

"Do you want me to walk away and leave you?" she asked, suddenly
sitting up straight and looking at him with dilating eyes. "If you
want a `scene'----"

"It's over," he said, more calmly. "I know now how dangerous the
man is. Of course you will tell him I said that." He laughed
quietly. "Well--between a dangerous chap and a desperate one, we
may look for some lively times! Do you know, I believe I think
about as continuously of him, lately, as I do of you. That's why I
put almost my last cent into his oil company, and got what may be
almost my last dance with you!"

"I wouldn't call it `almost' your last dance with me!" she
returned icily. "Not after what you've said. I had a foolish idea
you could behave--well, at least decently."

"Did Corliss tell you that I insulted him in his rooms at the
hotel?"

"You!" She laughed, genuinely. "I see him letting you!"

"He did, however. By manner and in speech I purposely and
deliberately insulted him. You'll tell him every word of this, of
course, and he'll laugh at it, but I give myself the pleasure of
telling you. I put the proposition of an `investment' to him in a
way nobody not a crook would have allowed to be smoothed over--and
he allowed it to be smoothed over. He ate it! I felt he was a
swindler when he was showing Richard Lindley his maps and papers,
and now I've proved it to myself, and it's worth the price."
Often, when they had danced, and often during this interview, his
eyes lifted curiously to the white flaming crescent in her hair;
now they fixed themselves upon it, and in a flash of divination he
cried: "You wear it for me!"

S