always trying to touch her--never in a way that she could have
resented, or felt like resenting. He was not unattractive to her, and
she was eager to learn all he had to teach, and saw no harm in helping
herself by letting him love.

Toward the middle of the second week, when they were alone in her
dressing-room, he--with the ingenious lack of abruptness of the
experienced man at the game--took her hand, and before she was ready,
kissed her. He did not accompany these advances with an outburst of
passionate words or with any fiery lighting up of the eyes, but calmly,
smilingly, as if it were what she was expecting him to do, what he had
a right to do.

She did not know quite how to meet this novel attack. She drew her hand
away, went on talking about the part--the changes he had suggested in
her entrance, as she sang her best solo. He discussed this with her
until they rose to leave the theater. He looked smilingly down on her,
and said with the flattering air of the satisfied connoisseur:

"Yes, you are charming, Mildred. I can make a great artist and a great
success out of you. We need each other."

"I certainly need you," said she gratefully. "How much you've done for
me."

"Only the beginning," replied he. "Ah, I have such plans for you--such
plans. Crossley doesn't realize how far you can be made to go--with
the right training. Without it--" He shook his head laughingly. "But
you shall have it, my dear." And he laid his hands lightly and
caressingly upon her shoulders.

The gesture was apparently a friendly familiarity. To resent it, even
to draw away, would put her in the attitude of the woman absurdly
exercised about the desirability and sacredness of her own charms.

Still smiling, in that friendly, assured way, he went on: "You've been
very cold and reserved with me, my dear. Very unappreciative."

Mildred, red and trembling, hung her head in confusion.

"I've been at the business ten years," he went on, "and you're the
first woman I've been more than casually interested in. The pretty
ones were bores. The homely ones--I can't interest myself in a homely
woman, no matter how much talent she has. A woman must first of all
satisfy the eye. And you--" He seated himself and drew her toward
him. She, cold all over and confused in mind and almost stupefied,
resisted with all her strength; but her strength seemed to be oozing
away. She said:

"You must not do this. You must not do this