f those grey eyes of hers a light which would have
warned a man less satisfied with his own genius and power of persuasion
than Thornton Lyne.

He was not looking at her face. His eyes were running approvingly over
her perfect figure, noting the straightness of the back, the fine poise
of the head, the shapeliness of the slender hands.

He pushed back his long black hair from his forehead and smiled. It
pleased him to believe that his face was cast in an intellectual mould,
and that the somewhat unhealthy pastiness of his skin might be described
as the "pallor of thought."

Presently he looked away from her through the big bay window which
overlooked the crowded floor of Lyne's Stores.

He had had this office built in the entresol and the big windows had been
put in so that he might at any time overlook the most important
department which it was his good fortune to control.

Now and again, as he saw, a head would be turned in his direction, and he
knew that the attention of all the girls was concentrated upon the little
scene, plainly visible from the floor below, in which an unwilling
employee was engaged.

She, too, was conscious of the fact, and her discomfort and dismay
increased. She made a little movement as if to go, but he stopped her.

"You don't understand, Odette," he said. His voice was soft and
melodious, and held the hint of a caress. "Did you read my little book?"
he asked suddenly.

She nodded.

"Yes, I read--some of it," she said, and the colour deepened on her face.

He chuckled.

"I suppose you thought it rather curious that a man in my position should
bother his head to write poetry, eh?" he asked. "Most of it was written
before I came into this beastly shop, my dear--before I developed into a
tradesman!"

She made no reply, and he looked at her curiously.

"What did you think of them?" he asked.

Her lips were trembling, and again he mistook the symptoms.

"I thought they were perfectly horrible," she said in a low voice.
"Horrible!"

He raised his eyebrows.

"How very middle-class you are, Miss Rider!" he scoffed. "Those verses
have been acclaimed by some of the best critics in the country as
reproducing all the beauties of the old Hellenic poetry."

She went to speak, but stopped herself and stood with lips compressed.

Thornton Lyne shrugged his shoulders and strode to the other end of his
luxuriously equipped office.

"Poetry, like cucumbers, is an acquired taste," he s