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"Don't speak that way, Leila I--there is no woman, no friend, I care for as much as I do you It is easy, I think, for a woman, like you, to make a man care for her You will not do it, will you?"

"I will," she said softly

"It's no use; I can't turn on him I can't! He is my friend, you see"

"Let him remain so I shall do what I can Let him remain a monument to his fellow-beasts What do I care? Do you think I desire to turn you into his iradation and nise love unaccompanied by the attendant beast? I--I don't know; you had better teach me, if I prove blind If you can love o blind forever"

She laid one hand on his arh the doorway

"If you are going to sleep before we start you had better be about it!" she said, looking back at him from the stairs

But he had no further need of sleep; and for a long while he stood at the atching the lah the leafless thickets of the park like winter fire-flies

At one o'clock, hearing Agatha Caithness speak to Leila'sdown at the desk, telephoned to Desnified his intention of recouping at Burbank's Then he et Burbank's on the wire, and finally Mortimer himself, but was only cursed for his pains and cut off in the

So he wandered up-stairs into Mortimer's apartments, where he tubbed and dressed, and finally descended, to find Agatha Caithness alone in the library, spinning a roulette wheel and whistling an air fro it"

"No; it's better off without the words; and so are you," added Agatha candidly, relinquishing the wheel and strolling with languid grace about the roorant steps to the indolent, wicked air And, "'Je rougirais de men ivresse Si tu conservais ta raison!'"

she huain toward Plank, her pretty, pale face delicate as an enaht from the crystal chandeliers

"I understand that Mr Mortioing to dance with me, if I find nobody better?"

He expressed himself flattered, cautiously He was one of irl, with eyes too pale for beauty, yet strangely alluring, too Few men denied the indefinable enchantaze unmoved In the sensitive curve of her mouth there was a kind of sensuousness; in her low voice, in her pallor, in the sliue provocation thatmore definite on which to base their curiosity