ith a curious depth that spoke of many things--the eyes of a
girl who, had he been wiser, he would have known had been in love before.
This was the type of woman who never loved but once, and then with all her
strength beyond her own high dreams of what love should be. But though Pell
could appraise men, judge them swiftly and surely, he was a fool where a
girl was concerned. He had never spent much time on them. Frankly, they
bored him. He liked far better the subtle game of finance. He had no
finesse in a world of women, and he would have been the easiest possible
prey of an adventuress.

But Lucia was far from that. Of the best family, with old traditions, she
moved among the set she wished; but society, so called, did not appeal to
her. She preferred people with brains rather than the idle rich; and she
had traveled a great deal, and known the world in strange places. She was
very young when she met the one man of all men for her. Like all women of
great beauty she had known many men who were infatuated with her. Those
gifts and attentions which are the rightful dower of every charming girl
were hers in abundance; and she received them as a queen might have done
from subjects hardly worthy to sit beside her. Then she met--one man.

It was during a trip she had made with her aunt through New England. He was
poor. To her, that made no difference. She would have gone with him to the
ends of the earth. The flame had touched her heart; she was a victim, like
many another; and when her lover, too proud to ask her to share his poverty
with her, stayed behind when she went back to New York, and failed to write
to her, she almost died of grief. But life had to be faced. One word from
her--she, too, was proud,--and there might have been a different story to
tell. But with the foolish self-consciousness of lovers, each failed the
other in the great moment that would have sealed their destinies.

Lucia determined that this broken affair should not wreck her existence.
But she brooded long, in secret, and would go nowhere. Her aunt, with whom
she lived, could not rouse her for many months to a sense of the vivid
world around her. She would see no one.

Two years later Morgan Pell came into her life, at almost the first dinner
she had attended during a long period of time. His impulsiveness, his
assurance, his faith in himself and his power to win her, swept her
temporarily off her feet. At their second meeting he asked her to b