ony, surveyed her amusedly.

"Where have you been?" said he.

"To church," replied Honora, demurely.

"Such virtue is unheard of in Quicksands."

"It isn't virtue," said Honora.

"I had my doubts about that, too," he declared.

"What is it, then?" she asked laughingly, wondering why he had such a
faculty of stirring her excitement and interest.

"Dissatisfaction," was his prompt reply.

"I don't see why you say that," she protested.

"I'm prepared to make my wager definite," said he. "The odds are a
thoroughbred horse against a personally knitted worsted waistcoat that
you won't stay in Quicksands six months."

"I wish you wouldn't talk nonsense," said Honora, "and besides, I can't
knit."

There was a short silence during which he didn't relax his disconcerting
stare.

"Won't you come in?" she asked. "I'm sorry Howard isn't home."

"I'm not," he said promptly. "Can't you come over to my box for lunch?
I've asked Lula Chandos and Warry Trowbridge."

It was not without appropriateness that Trixton Brent called his house
the "Box." It was square, with no pretensions to architecture whatever,
with a porch running all the way around it. And it was literally filled
with the relics of the man's physical prowess cups for games of all
descriptions, heads and skins from the Bitter Roots to Bengal, and masks
and brushes from England. To Honora there was an irresistible and
mysterious fascination in all these trophies, each suggesting a finished
--and some perhaps a cruel--performance of the man himself. The cups were
polished until they beat back the light like mirrors, and the glossy bear
and tiger skins gave no hint of dying agonies.

Mr. Brent's method with women, Honora observed, more resembled the noble
sport of Isaac Walton than that of Nimrod, but she could not deny that
this element of cruelty was one of his fascinations. It was very evident
to a feminine observer, for instance, that Mrs. Chandos was engaged in a
breathless and altogether desperate struggle with the slow but inevitable
and appalling Nemesis of a body and character that would not harmonize.
If her figure grew stout, what was to become of her charm as an 'enfant
gate'? Her host not only perceived, but apparently derived great
enjoyment out of the drama of this contest. From self-indulgence to
self-denial--even though inspired by terror--is a far cry. And Trixton
Brent had evidently prepared his menu with a satanic purpose.

"What! No entr