much on a woman's condescension to _you_; it may come through love
for another.

Zoe was innocent, honest, and confiding. Innocence measures the
strength of faith. The charm of faith is its absurdity. Zoe believed in
Sampey.

Sampey, grown surprisingly bold and self-reliant, named his terms to
Castellani--a half-interest in the business--and Castellani, swear and
bully and bluster as he might, must accept. This made Sampey a rich man
at once. Castellani, exceedingly gracious and friendly after the
signing of the compact, proposed a quiet supper in his private
apartments in celebration of the new arrangement, and presently he and
Zoe and Sampey were enjoying a very choice meal. Zoe was dazzlingly
radiant and pretty, but a certain strange constraint sat between her
and Sampey. Once, when she dropped her napkin and Sampey picked it up,
his hand accidentally touched one of her daintily slippered feet, and
his blushes were painful to see.

While they were thus engaged, Bat, without ceremony, burst in upon
them, his face aglow and his eyes flashing triumph. He carried in his
hand a small box, which he rudely thrust under their noses. When Sampey
saw it he turned deathly pale and shrank back, powerless to move or
speak.

"I ketcha da scound!" exclaimed Bat, shaking his finger in the cowering
Sampey's face. "I watch 'im; I ketcha da scound! He play you da dirtee
tr-r-icks!"

The Wild Man of Milo placed the box on the table and raised the lid.
Within appeared a number of curious, small, cup-shaped trinkets of
opaque white glass, each marked in the centre with an annular band of
color surrounding a centre of clear glass, the range of colors being
great, and the trinkets arranged in pairs according to color. There
were also a vial labelled "cocaine" and a small camel's-hair brush.

"You looka me," resumed Hoolagaloo, greatly excited. "I maka mine eye
changa colah, lika da scounda Samp."

With that he dipped the brush into the vial and applied it to his eyes.
Then he picked up two of the curious little glass cups, and slipped
them, one at a time, over his eyeballs and under his eyelids, where
they fitted snugly. They were artificial eyes which Sampey had had made
to cover his natural eyeballs on occasion. Bat struck a mock-tragic
attitude and hissed:

"Diavolo!"

By a strange accident he had picked out two which were not mates. One
of his eyes was a soft, pale, limpid amber and the other a fierce and
insurrectionary r