love beauty and ease and knowledge and
experience. For what else," he smiled, "did Eve eat the apple? All
these you can have if you will let us take you East. Of course, if I
find you cannot take this part, I will hold myself accountable for
you. I will not let you be a loser in any way by the experiment. With
your beauty"--Yarnall fell back in his chair and gaped from the
excited speaker to the silent listener--"and your extraordinary voice,
and your magnetism, you must be especially fitted for a career of some
kind. I promise to find you your career."

Every drop of blood had fallen from Jane's face and the rough hands on
her knee were locked together.

"What part," she asked in a quick, low voice, "is this that you think
I could learn to do?"

Jasper changed his position. He came nearer and spoke more rapidly.
"It is the story of a girl, a savage girl, whom a man takes up and
trains. He trains her as a professional might train a lioness. It is a
passion with him to break spirits and shape them to his will. He
trains her with coaxing and lashing--not actual lashing, though I
believe in one place he does come near to beating her--and he gets her
broken so that she lies at his feet and eats out of his hand. All
this, you understand, while he's an exile from his own world. Then, in
the second act,--that is the second part of the play,--he takes his
tamed lioness back to civilization. They go to London and there the
woman does his training infinite credit. She is extraordinarily
beautiful; she is civilized, successful, courted. Her eccentricities
only add to her charm. So it goes on very prettily for a while. Then
he makes a mistake. He blunders very badly. He gives his lioness cause
for jealousy and--to come to the point--she flies at his throat. You
see, he hadn't really tamed her. She was under the skin, a lioness, a
beast, at heart."

Jasper had been absorbed in the plot and had not noticed Jane, but
Yarnall for several minutes had been leaning forward, his hands
tightened on the arms of his chair. The instant Jasper stopped he held
up his hand.

"Quiet, Jane," he said softly as a man might speak to a plunging
horse. "Steady!"

Jane got to her feet. She was very white. She put up her hand and
pressed the back of it against her forehead and from under this hand
she looked at the two men with eyes of such astonished pain and beauty
as they could never forget.

"Yes," she said presently; "that's something I _c