love with a
love that cares for nothing else, and if need be to hate with a hate
that cares for nothing else. She must be a woman with fire in her veins
and lightning in her heart, one who would appear to the man she loves
not only a woman, but as a goddess as well."

"And have you found such a woman?"

She spoke in cold, level tones.

The Secretary looked at her sitting there, her head thrown slightly
back, her eyes closed and the curve of her chin defiant to the uttermost
degree. The wonder that he had not always loved this woman instead of
Helen Harley returned to him. She was a girl and yet she was not; there
was nothing about her immature or imperfect; she was girl and woman,
too. She had spoken to him in the coldest of tones, yet he believed in
the fire beneath the ice. He wished to see what kind of torch would set
the flame. His feeling for her before had been intellectual, now it was
sentimental and passionate.

James Sefton realized that Lucia Catherwood was not merely a woman to be
admired, but one to be loved and desired. She had appealed to him as one
with whom to make a great career; now she appealed to him as a woman
with whom to live. He remembered the story of her carrying the wounded
Prescott off the battlefield in her arms and in the dark, alone and
undaunted, amid all the dead of the Wilderness. She was tall and strong,
but was it so much strength and endurance as love and sacrifice? He was
filled with a sudden fierce and wild jealousy of Prescott, because, when
wounded and stricken down, she had sheltered him within her arms.

His look again followed the curves of her noble face and figure, the
full development of strong years, and a fire of which he had not deemed
himself capable burned in the eyes of the Secretary. The pale shade of
Helen Harley floated away in the mist, but Lucia met his silent gaze
firmly, and again she asked in cold, level tones:

"Have you found such a woman?"

"Yes, I have found her," replied the Secretary. "Perhaps I did not know
it until to-day; perhaps I was not sure, but I have found her. I am a
cold and what one would call a selfish man, but ice breaks up under
summer heat, and I have yielded to the spell of your presence, Lucia."

"Miss Catherwood!"

"Well, Miss Catherwood--no, Lucia it shall be! I swear it shall be
Lucia! I do not care for courtesy now, and you are compelled to hear me
say it. It is a noble name, a beautiful one, and it gives me pleasure to