A BLOODLESS ENTHUSIAST.

Cryder did not come the next day or evening, nor did he write. At first Hermia experienced a mild fear that he was ill; but Helen Simms called the following morning and said, en passant, that she had met him a few moments before on the street. Then Hermia began to be piqued and a little mortified. For several hours she thought less about dismissing him. The next day the whole thing seemed like a dream; she caught herself wondering if it had really happened. At this point she received a note from Cryder.

Hermia shrugged her shoulders. It was very pretty, but rather tame. At the same time her pride was glad to be reassured that he still loved her, and she once more put her dismissal into mental shape and blunted the arrow of decree with what art she possessed.

When he was shown into the library that evening she rose nervously, wondering how she was to keep him from kissing her. He raised her hand lightly to his lips after his old habit, complimented her Catherine de’ Medici gown, and threw himself into an easy-chair by the fire.

“How grateful this fire is!” he exclaimed. “It is one of those horrid, sleety nights. The horse slipped once or twice.”

“Did you come in a cab?” asked Hermia.

“Yes; I had not the courage to face that long block from the elevated.”

He settled himself back in his chair, asked permission to light a cigarette, and for an hour entertained her in his most brilliant vein. Hermia listened with the most complex sensations of her life. The predominating one at first was intense mortification. There was no danger of this man blowing out his brains for any woman. She was rather the most agreeable woman he knew just then, but—there were plenty of others in the world. Then her brain and her philosophy came to her aid, and she began to be amused. She had always been able to laugh at her own expense, and she indulged in a little private burst whilst Cryder was reciting a graphic passage from his lately finished book. The laugh added several years to her twenty-five, but on the whole, she concluded, it did her good.

Then she began to reason: Why break it off? He is the most agreeable man I have ever known; why lose him? If I dismiss him thus cavalierly, he will be piqued at least, and I shall not even have his friendship. And I can never love or have a throb of real feeling. All that was the delusion of a morbid imagination. There are no men like those I have dreamed of. The ocean rolls between the actual and the ideal.

She did Cryder some injustice in the earlier part of her meditations. He was really very fond of her. There were many things about her that he liked immensely. She was beautiful, she was artistic, she had a fine mind, and, above all things, she was the fashion, and he had carried her off. But he never rushed at a woman and kissed her the moment he entered the room; he did not think it good taste. Moreover, she looked particularly handsome in that black-velvet gown and stiff white ruff, and her position in that carved, high-backed chair was superb. His eye was too well pleased to allow the interference of his other senses. After a time he went over and lifted her face and kissed her. She shrugged her shoulders a little but made no resistance.

TASTELESS FRUIT.

She began to have an absurdly married feeling. When she had made up her mind to drift on the wave she had chosen, she had consoled herself with the thought that, if love was a disappointment, the situation was romantic. By constantly reminding herself that she was the heroine of “an experience,” she could realize in part her old wild dreams. To create objective illusion was a task she soon renounced. No matrimonial conditions were ever more prosaic and matter-of-fact than the various phases of this affair.

The evenings were long and very pleasant. Cryder smoked innumerable cigarettes in the most comfortable chair in the library, and was never dull. Hermia began to get rather fond of him in a motherly sort of way. One night he had a cold and she gave him a dose of quinine; occasionally she sent him certain of her cook’s dainty concoctions. She always had a little supper for him on his particular evenings, and took care that his favorite dishes were prepared.

She had her intervals of disgust and fury with fate, but they were becoming less frequent. Like all tragic and unversed women she was an extremist. She had dreamed that life was one thing; her particular episode had taught her that it was another. There was no medium nor opposite pole; she had been wrong in every theory.

Ennui was her worst enemy. Sometimes she got tired of the very sound of Cryder’s voice—it ceased so seldom. She longed for variety of any sort, for something to assure her that she was not as flatly married as Bessie and her husband. One day when she was more bored than usual Helen Simms came in.

“How brilliant you look!” she exclaimed. “What is the matter with you?”

“Ennui; life is a burden.”

“Where is Ogden Cryder? I thought he had put ennui to flight.”

“He is charming,” said Hermia, “and I am having that flirtation with him that you advised; but even that is getting a little monotonous.”

“I will tell you what you want,” exclaimed Helen, decidedly. “You want to see something of the champagne side of life. You have had enough of a flirtation by a library fire in a feudal room; it is time you did something a little more risqué! Get Mr. Cryder to take you to some awfully wicked place to dine—some place which would mean social ostracism were you found out—only you mustn’t be found out. There is nothing actually wrong in it, and the danger gives one the most delightful sensation.”

Hermia elevated her nose. “I hate anything ‘fast,’” she said. “I prefer to keep out of that sort of atmosphere.”

“Oh, nonsense! It is the spice of life; the spice without the vulgarity. To have all the appearance of being quite wicked, and yet to be actually as innocent as a lamb—what more stimulating? It is the only thing which has saved my valuable life. I always amuse myself picturing how poor papa would look if he should suddenly descend upon me. Then after the dinner take a drive through the park in a hansom—at midnight! You quite feel as if you were eloping; and yet—with none of the disagreeable consequences. You elope, and that is the end of you. You drive through the park in a hansom, and go home and to bed like a good little girl. The next week—you drive through the park in another hansom. Then you feel that life is worth living. Some night you and Mr. Cryder, Mr. Winston and myself will have a tear.”

“No!” exclaimed Hermia; “I abominate that sort of thing, and I will not go.”

But Helen, unconsciously, had appalled her. Was there no other escape from ennui? What a prospect! Mrs. Dykman had promised to take her to Europe. She determined to make that lady hasten her plans and go at once.

A COMMONPLACE MEETING.

Quintard, after an absence of five years, had returned to New York to find Hermia Suydam the sensation of the year. He saw her first at the Metropolitan Opera-House, and, overhearing some people discussing her, followed the direction of their glances. She had never looked more radiant. Her hair shone across the house like burnished brass; her eyes had the limpid brilliancy of emeralds, and the black lashes lay heavy above and below them; her skin was like ivory against which pomegranate pulp had been crushed, and her mouth was as red as a cactus-flower. Her neck and arms and a portion of her bust were uncovered. Although it was a first night and most of her sister belles were present, her peculiar, somewhat barbaric beauty glittered like a planet in a firmament of stars.

Quintard left his seat at the end of the second act and walked back and forth in the lobby until he met Ralph Embury.

“Do you know Miss Suydam?” he asked the lively little journalist.

Embury hastened to assure him that he had the honor of Miss Suydam’s acquaintance.

“Then introduce me,” said Quintard.

Embury went at once to ask Miss Suydam’s permission for the desired presentation, and, returning in a few moments, told Quintard to follow him. Cryder gave his chair to Quintard, and Hermia was very gracious. She talked in a low, full voice as individual as her beauty—a voice that suggested the possibility of increasing to infinite volume of sound—a voice that might shake a hearer with its passion, or grow hoarse as a sea in a storm. Quintard had never heard just such a voice before, but he decided—why, he did not define—that the voice suited its owner.

She said nothing beyond the small-talk born of the conditions of the moment, but she gave him food for speculation, nevertheless. Had it not been absurd, he would have said that twice a look of unmistakable terror flashed through her eyes. She was looking steadily at him upon both occasions—once he was remarking that he was delighted to get back to America, and again that he had last seen Tannhäuser at Bayreuth.

He was also perplexed by a vague sense of unreality about her. What it meant he could not define; she was not an adventuress, nor was her beauty artificial. While he was working at his problems the curtain went down on the third act, and she rose to go. She held out her hand to him with a frank smile and said good-night. When she had put on her wraps she bent her head to him again and went out of the door. Then she turned abruptly and walked quickly back to him. The color had spread over her face, but the expression of terror had not returned to her eyes. They were almost defiant.

“Come and see me,” she said quickly.

He bowed. “I shall be delighted,” he murmured; but she left before he had finished.

“She is lovely,” he thought, “but how odd! What is the matter with her?”

BACK TO THE PAST.

Hermia gave a little supper after the opera, and, when the last guest had gone, she went up to her room and sank down in a heap before her bedroom fire. As she stared at the coals, the terrified look came back to her eyes and remained there. She had received a shock. And yet Quintard had only uttered a dozen sentences, and these she could not recall. And she had never seen him before. Had not she? She closed her eyes. Once more she was in her little Brooklyn room; that room had been transformed * * * and she was not alone. She opened her eyes and gave a quick glance about her, then plunged her head between her knees and clasped her hands about the back of it. She must conjure up some other setting from that strange, far-away past of hers—one that had never been reproduced in this house. There had been splendid forests in those old domains of hers, forests which harbored neither tigers nor panthers, bulbuls nor lotus-lilies. Only the wind sighed through them, or the stately deer stalked down their dim, cool aisles. Once more she drifted from the present. He was there, that lover of her dreams; she lay in his arms; his lips were at her throat. How long and how faithfully she had loved him! Every apple on the tree of life they had eaten together. And how cavalierly she had dismissed him! how deliberately forgotten him! She had not thought of him for months—until to-night.

She raised her head with abrupt impatience and scowled. What folly! How many men had not she met with black hair and dark-blue eyes and athletic frames? What woman ever really met her ideal? But—there had been something besides physical resemblance of build and color. A certain power had shone through his eyes, a certain magnetism had radiated from him—she shuddered, threw herself back on the rug, and covered her eyes with her hands. To meet him now!

QUINTARD IS DISCUSSED.

The next afternoon Hermia was sitting in the library with Miss Starbruck when Helen came in. Hermia greeted her eagerly. Helen always diverted her mind. Perversely, also, she wanted to hear some one speak of Quintard.

“I have only a few moments,” said Helen. “I told Mr. Winston to call for me at four. We are going to find a place to walk where we shall not meet everybody we know——.” She stopped suddenly as she caught sight of Miss Starbruck’s gray, erect figure and shocked expression. “I beg your pardon, Miss Starbruck,” she said, sweetly; “I did not see you.”

“Why do you object to meeting people you know when you walk with young men?” demanded Miss Starbruck, severely.

Helen, by this time, had quite recovered her presence of mind. “Oh! they always want to stop and talk,” she said, lightly, “and that is such a bore.” Then she turned to Hermia: “I saw Grettan Quintard in your box last night. Did you ever hear such a name? As hard as a rock! But I imagine it suits him—although he felt pretty bad five years ago.”

“What about?” demanded Hermia.

“You never heard that story? But, to be sure, that was before your time. He was awfully in love with Mrs. Theodore Maitland—one of the prettiest women in town—and she with him. Everybody was talking, and finally Mr. Maitland found it out. He was very cool about it; he calmly went down town to a lawyer and told him to begin proceedings for a divorce. He sent for his things and took rooms at a hotel. Everybody cut Mrs. Maitland, and she felt so horrible that she killed herself. Quintard was fearfully upset. He went abroad at once and staid five years. This is his first reappearance.”

“A true nineteenth-century romance!” exclaimed Hermia, sarcastically. “An intrigue, a divorce court, and a suicide!” But she had listened with a feeling of dull jealousy, and the absurdity of it angered her. Her imagination had made a fool of her often enough; was she about to weakly yield herself to its whip again? What was Quintard or his past to her? “I rather liked his face,” she added, indifferently. “Did you know him before he went away?”

“Only by sight. I was not out. For the matter of that he went out very little himself until the Mrs. Maitland episode. He cared nothing for society, and only went into it to be with her. He wasn’t even very much of a club man, and had few intimates. I met him the other night at Mrs. Trennor-Secor’s dinner, and he took me in. I can’t say I care much for him; he’s too quiet. But he is awfully good-looking, and has great distinction. It is time,” she added, glancing at the clock, “for Mr. Winston to appear.”

“Are you engaged to that young man?” asked Miss Starbruck.

Helen stared. “Oh, no!” she said, with a little laugh; “he is only my first infant-in-waiting.”

The “infant” arrived as she spoke. He was a mild, blonde, inoffensive-looking youth, so faithful to his type that it was difficult to remember him by name until closer acquaintance had called out his little individualities. He had his importance and use, however; he knew how to get up and carry off a ball. He even attended to the paying of the bills when husbands were too busy or had moved to Greenwood. He had saved Hermia a great deal of trouble, and she rewarded him by taking him to the theater occasionally. He admired her in a distant, awe-struck way, much as a pug admires the moon; but he preferred Helen Simms.

“I am afraid you will find it rather cold for walking,” he said to Helen, with his nationally incorrect imitation of English drawl and accent. “It is quite beastly out, don’t you know?”

“Yes,” said Helen, “I know; but you will have to stand it. Good-bye, Hermia. A walk would not hurt you; you are looking pale.”

“Aren’t you going to let me sit down for a moment?” asked Winston.

“No, it is getting late; and, besides, Hermia doesn’t want you. Come.”

They went out, and Miss Starbruck remarked: “That is the average man of to-day, I suppose. They were different when I was young.”

“Oh, no; that is not the average man,” said Hermia; “that is only the average society man. They are two distinct species, I assure you.”

“Well, at all events, I prefer him to that dreadful Mr. Quintard. I hope he will not come to this house, Hermia.”

“Oh, I have invited him,” said Hermia, indifferently. “He shines beside some who come here, if you did but know it.”

“Then I am thankful I do not know it,” exclaimed Miss Starbruck. “I think I will go up-stairs and talk to Miss Newton.”

“No,” said Hermia, “stay and talk to me. I am bored! I hate to be alone! Sit down.”

PLATONIC PROSPECTS.

She met Quintard the next afternoon at a tea. She was standing with a group of people when he joined her. After a moment he asked her to go over to the other side of the room and talk to him. She was somewhat amused at his directness, but went with him to a sofa and ignored the rest of the company for a half-hour.

At the end of that time she drew a long sigh of relief. He was not her ideal; he was commonplace. He talked very well, but with none of Cryder’s brilliancy. He was even a little didactic, a quality she detested. And he had none of the tact of an accomplished man of the world. She was not surprised to hear that he had not been to five entertainments in as many years. There was no subtle flattery in his manner; he did not appear to take any personal interest in her whatever; sometimes he appeared inattentive to what she was saying. She wondered why he had insisted upon talking to her. Moreover, he was cold, and coldness and her ideal had never shaken hands. He looked as if nothing could move that calm self-control, that slow, somewhat stiff formality.

She saw him several times during the next two weeks, but never alone. In the mean time she heard much of him. His personal appearance, his wealth, his exile and its cause, made him an interesting figure, and people began to remember and compare all the tales regarding him which had floated across the Atlantic during the last five years. These tales were of a highly adventurous nature, and were embroidered and fringed.

Quintard was not very grateful. He went out seldom, and got away as soon as he could. This, of course, made people wonder what he was doing.

Hermia heard all these stories with some surprise. They seemed so incongruous with the man. Assuredly there was neither romance nor love of adventure in him; he was quite matter-of-fact; he might have been a financier. She thought, however, that he had humor enough to be amused at the stories he had inspired.

One evening he found her alone. The night was cold, and she was sitting in a heap in a big arm-chair by the fire, huddled up in a soft, bright, Japanese gown. She did not rise as he entered, and he looked at her calmly and took a seat on the other side of the hearth.

“You look comfortable,” he said. “Those gowns are the warmest things in the world. I have one that I wear when I sit by the fire all night and think. If my dinner does not agree with me, I do not sleep like a lamb.”

This was romantic! Hermia had a fine contempt for people who recognized the existence of their internal organs. She raised her brows. “Why do you eat too much?” she demanded.

“Because I happen to feel like it at the time. The philosophy of life is to resist as few temptations as you conveniently can. I have made it a habit to resist but three.”

“And they are?”

“To tell a woman I love her, to make love to the wife of a friend, and to have a girl on my conscience. The latter is a matter of comfort, not of principle. The girl of to-day nibbles the apple with her eyes wide open.”

Hermia did not know whether she was angry or not. Her experience with Cryder had affected her peculiarly. He had the super-refinement of all artificial natures, and there had been nothing in his influence to coarsen the fiber of her mind. Moreover, he had barely ruffled the surface of her nature. She always had a strange feeling of standing outside of herself, of looking speculatively on while the material and insignificant part of her “played at half a love with half a lover.”

She was not used to such abrupt statements, but she was too much interested to change the conversation.

“Do you mean that you never tell a woman when you love her?” she asked, after a moment.

“If I loved a woman I should tell her so, of course. I make it a principle never to tell a woman that I love her, because I never do. It saves trouble and reproaches.”

Hermia leaned forward. “Did not you love Mrs. Maitland?” she asked.

The color mounted to Quintard’s face.

“My dear Miss Suydam, this is the nineteenth century—the latter quarter. Love of that sort is an episode, a detached link.” He leaned forward and smiled. “I suppose you think I talk like the villain in the old-fashioned novel,” he said. “But codes of all sorts have their evolutions and modifications. The heroes of the past would cut a ridiculous figure in the civilization of to-day. I am not a villain. I am merely a man of my prosaic times.”

It was as she had thought—no romance, no love of the past. But the man had a certain power; there was no denying that. And his audacity and brutal frankness, so different from Cryder’s cold-blooded acting, fascinated her.

“Oh, no! I do not think you a villain,” she said; “only I don’t see how you could have had the cruelty to——”

“I am inclined to be faithful, Miss Suydam,” he interrupted. “In my extreme youth it was the reverse, but experience has taught me to appreciate and to hold on to certain qualities when I find them—for in combination they are rare. When one comes to the cross-roads, and shakes hands good-bye with Youth, his departing comrade gives him a little packet. The packet is full of seeds, and the label is ‘philosophy.’”

“I found that packet long before I got to the cross-roads,” said Hermia, with a laugh—“that is, if I ever had any youth. How old are you?”

“Oh, only thirty-four as yet. But I got to the cross-roads rather early. What do you mean by saying that you never had any youth?”

“Nothing. Are all those European stories about you true?”

“What stories?”

“Oh! all those stories about women. They say you have had the most dreadful adventures.”

Quintard shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know what the stories are,” he said. “Nor do I particularly care. I am not posing as a masculine Circe or a destroyer of households. You must remember that there are more than two classes of women in the world. There are many women who are without any particular ties, who live a drifting, Bohemian sort of existence, who may have belonged to society once, but have exhausted it, and prefer the actualities of life. These women are generally the most companionable in every respect. And they are more or less indifferent to public opinion.”

“I was sure of one thing!” exclaimed Hermia; “but, if possible, you have made me more sure: you have not a spark of romance in you.”

An expression of shyness crossed Quintard’s face, and he hesitated a moment.

“Oh, well, you know, nobody has in these days,” he said, awkwardly. “What would people do with romance? They would never find any one to share it.”

“No,” said Hermia, with a laugh, “probably they would not.”

He went away soon after, and she did not see him again for a week. Cryder came the next night, and Hermia had never liked him less. He was as entertaining as usual, but he was more like highly-charged mineral water than ever. He spoke of his personal adventures; they were tame and flat. Nothing he said could grasp her, hold her. He seemed merely an embodied intellect, a clever, bloodless egoist, babbling eternally about his little self. As she sat opposite him, she wondered how she had managed to stand him so long. She was glad Quintard had come to relieve the monotony. He was the sort of man she would care to have for a friend.

AN UNEXPECTED CONFESSION.

She met Quintard next at one of Mrs. Dykman’s musicales. That fashionable lady was fond of entertaining, and Hermia was delighted to pay the bills. If it pleased Mrs. Dykman to have her entertainments in her own house rather than in the mansion on Second Avenue, she should be gratified, and Winston never betrayed family secrets.

People were very glad to go to Mrs. Dykman’s house. She never had any surprises for them, but they always went away feeling that her evening had been one of the successes of the season. In her palmier days she had done much entertaining, and seen a great deal of the world. She had been a beauty in her youth, and was still so handsome that people forgot to insult her by calling her “well preserved.” If her hair had turned gray, the world never found it out; she wore a dark-brown wig which no one but her maid had ever seen elsewhere than on her head; and her unfathomable gray eyes had not a wrinkle about them. She still carried her head with the air of one who has had much incense offered her, and, although her repose amounted to monotony, it was very impressive. She had grown stout, but every curve of her gowns, every arrangement of draperies, lied as gracefully and conclusively as a diplomatist. She was one of the few women upon whom Quintard ever called, and he was a great pet of hers.

“She may not be an intellectual woman,” he said to Hermia, on this night of the musicale, “but she has learned enough in her life to make up for it. I have seldom met a more interesting woman. If she were twenty years younger, I’d ask her to marry and knock about the world with me.”

“Yes? I suppose you find the intellectual a good deal of a bore, do you not?”

“Was that a shot? By itself, emphatically yes—a hideous bore. When combined with one or two other things, most eagerly to be welcomed.”

“What other things?”

“Oh, womanliness and savoir—but, primarily, passion.”

“Do you know that you are very frank?” exclaimed Hermia.

“I beg your pardon,” humbly. “I have a bad habit of saying what I think, and, besides, I feel a doubly strong impulse to be frank with you. I abominate girls as a rule; I never talk to them. But I have rather a feeling of good comradeship with you. It always seems as if you understood, and it never occurs to me that I can make a mistake with you. You are quite unlike other girls. You have naturally a broad mind. Do not deliberately contract it.”

“No,” said Hermia, quite mollified, “I have no desire to; and, for some peculiar reason, what you say may startle but it never offends. You have a way of carrying things off.”

After the music and supper were over, Hermia sat with him awhile up-stairs in her aunt’s boudoir.

“Have you idled away your whole life?” she asked. “Do you never intend to do anything?”

“Do you think it is doing nothing to spend five years in the study of Europe?”

“But what are you going to do with it all? Just keep it in your head?”

“What would you have me do with it? Put it in a book and inflict it on the world?”

“Yes. Give yourself some definite object in life. I have no respect for people who just drift along—who have no ambition nor aim.”

“Well, I will tell you something if you will promise not to betray me,” he said, quickly: “I am writing a book.”

“No?” exclaimed Hermia. “Actually? Tell me about it. Is it a novel? a book of travels?”

“Neither. It is a series of lives of certain knights of Norman days about whom there are countless fragmentary legends, but nothing has ever been written. I am making a humble endeavor to reproduce these legends in the style and vernacular of the day and in blank verse. Imagine a band of old knights, broken-down warriors, hunted to the death, and hiding in a ruined castle. To while away the time they relate their youthful deeds of love and war. Do you like the idea?”

Hermia leaned forward with her eyes expanded to twice their natural size. “Do you mean to tell me,” she said, “that you care for the past—that its romance appeals to you?”

Quintard threw himself back in his chair and raised his eyebrows a little. “I have gone so far, I may as well confess the whole thing,” he said. “I would have lived in the feudal ages if I could. Love and war! That is all man was made for. Everything he has acquired since is artificial and in the way. He has lost the faculty of enjoying life since he has imagined he must have so much to enjoy it with. Let a man live for two passions, and he is happy. Let him have twenty ways of amusing himself, and he lowers his capacity for enjoying any one in the endeavor to patronize them all.”

Hermia remembered her experience with Cryder. He had talked very beautifully of the past—once. Life was making her skeptical. “Have you written any of your book?” she asked.

“Yes, it is nearly done.”

“Would you let me see it? Or is that asking too much? But—that period of history particularly interests me. I used to live in it.”

“Did you? I should be very glad to have you read my effusions; but wading through manuscript is a frightful bore.”

“I have waded through a good deal,” said Hermia, briefly. “Bring it to-morrow night. No,”—she had suddenly recollected that the next was Cryder’s evening. “Bring it the next night—no—the next. Will that do?”

“Yes,” said Quintard. “I will afflict you, with great pleasure, if you will let me.”

When they went down-stairs, Mrs. Dykman wrapped Hermia’s furs more closely about her. “I hope, my dear,” she murmured, “you do not mind that the whole house is talking about you. Do you know that Mr. Quintard is the only man whom you have condescended to notice during the entire evening?”

“No?” said Hermia. “I had not thought about it. No, I don’t mind. A woman is not happy until she is talked about—just a little, you know. When her position is secure, it makes her so picturesque—quite individual.”

“You will be engaged before the week is over. You will be accused of having deserted Mr. Cryder, and entered upon a more desperate flirtation yet. The ultra caustic will remember Grettan Quintard’s reputation.”

“You can deny the engagement,” said Hermia.

THE POWER OF PERSONALITY.

A few evenings later Quintard came with a portion of his book, which he had had type-written for her. While he amused himself with the many rare volumes on the library shelves, Hermia read the introduction and the four tales with equal interest and astonishment. They had a vital power which seemed to grip her mind as with a palpable hand and hold it until she had read the last of the sheets. Quintard had reproduced the style and spirit of the age with remarkable fidelity—the unbridled passions, the coarse wit, the stirring deeds of valor. He made no attempt at delicate pathos or ideality. When a man suffered, he raged like a wounded boar; every phase of his nature was portrayed in the rough.

Hermia dropped the sheets into her lap and gazed into the fire. Her opinion of Quintard had quite changed. Why did she not love him? But she did not. He attracted her mentally, and his character fascinated her, but stone could not be colder than her heart. Did he go out of the room that moment never to return, she would not care, save that a promising friend would be lost. He had come too late. She no longer possessed the power to love. She shrugged her shoulders. They could be friends; that was quite enough.

Her comments were very flattering and discriminating, and he was much gratified, and gave her a general idea of the rest of the book. She had one or two books that might help him, and she promised to send them to his rooms.

“You are a remarkable mixture,” she said, in conclusion; “at times you seem almost prosaic, altogether matter-of-fact. When I first met you, I decided that you were commonplace.”

“You will allow a man to have two sides, at least,” said Quintard, smiling. “I cannot always be walking on the ramparts of imagination. I enjoy being prosaic at intervals, and there are times when I delight to take a hammer and smash my ideals to atoms. I like to build a castle and raze it with a platitude, to create a goddess and paint wrinkles on her cheek, to go up among the gods and guy them into common mortals, to kiss a woman and smother passion with a jest.”

“That is the brutality in your nature.”

“Yes,” said Quintard, “I suppose that is it.”

She watched him for a moment. He had taken a chair near her and was leaning forward looking at the fire, his elbow on his knee, his chin in the cup of his hand. His strong, clean-cut profile stood out like a bas-relief against the dark wood of the mantel. The squareness of his jaw and the thickness of his neck indicated the intense vitality of his organism; his thick, black mustache overshadowed a mouth heavy and determined; his dense, fine hair clung about a head of admirable lines; and his blue eyes were very dark and piercing. He had the long, clean-limbed, sinewy figure of a trained athlete, and there was not an ounce of superfluous flesh on it. He combined the best of the old world’s beauty with the best of the new, and Hermia looked at him with a curious mixture of national and personal pride.

“I like brutality,” she said, abstractedly; “all the great men of the world had it.” She turned to him suddenly. “You look as if you always got whatever you made up your mind to have,” she said. “Do you?”

“Yes,” he said, “usually.”

HERMIA HEARS THE TRUTH.

He called one morning soon after and spent the entire day with her. He had finished the last of the stories and he read it to her. The tale was a tragic one, and had a wild, savage pathos in it. It brought the tears to her eyes, and at the climax she leaned forward with a gasp.

“Oh, you can cry?” said Quintard.

“It is only nervousness,” hastily. “I never do. I may have been able to once, but I no longer possess feeling of any sort. Don’t think that I am ridiculous and blasé; it is simply that I cannot take any personal interest in life. I have made the discovery that there is nothing in it a little sooner than most people—that is all.”

“You are a little crazy,” said Quintard. “You will get over it.”

The blood mounted to the roots of Hermia’s hair, and her eyes looked as fierce as if she were one of Quintard’s barbarians. She felt more anger than she cared to betray. No other man living would have dared make such a speech to her. Cryder would have humored her, and she had expected Quintard to be suitably impressed.

“What did you say?” she demanded, with an effort at control.

He looked at her unmoved. “You have a great many ridiculous notions about life,” he said. “In addition, you have less knowledge of yourself than any woman I have ever known. The two things combined have put your mind out of joint.”

Hermia felt as if she were stifling. “I wonder you dare,” she said through her teeth.

“Your point of view is all wrong,” he went on; “you see everything through glasses that do not fit your eyes. You are not fond of talking about yourself, but you have given me several opportunities to gather that. You think you have exhausted life, whereas you have not begun to live. You simply don’t even know what you are thinking about. You know less about the world than any woman of brain and opportunities I ever met in my life, and it is because you have deliberately blinded yourself by false and perverted views.”

Hermia’s teeth were clinched and her bosom was heaving. “You may as well finish,” she said, in a voice ominously calm.

“Just to mention one point. You have said you do not believe in matrimony—particularly when people love each other. I have had every experience with women that a romantic temperament can devise, so perhaps you will allow me to tell you that I have come to the conclusion that the only satisfactory relationship for a man and woman who love each other is matrimony. The very knowledge that conditions are temporary, acts as a check to love, and one is anxious to be off with one affair for the novelty of the next. Moreover, if human character is worth anything at all, it is worth its highest development. This, an irregular and passing union cannot accomplish; it needs the mutual duties and responsibilities and sacrifices of married life. If ever I really loved a woman I should ask her to marry me. You have got some absurd, romantic notions in your head about the charm and spice of an intrigue. Try it, and you will find it flatter than any matrimony you have ever seen or imagined.”

Hermia, with a cry of rage, sprang from her chair and rushed from the room. She dropped her handkerchief in her flight, and Quintard went forward and picked it up. “She is ready to tear me bone from bone,” he thought; “but, if I have destroyed some of her illusions, I shall not mind.” He passed his hand tenderly over the handkerchief, then raised it suddenly to his lips. A wave of color rushed over his dark face, making it almost black. “She was superb in her wrath,” he muttered, unsteadily.

He laid the handkerchief on the table and went back to his seat. After a time Hermia returned. She was very pale, and looked rather ashamed of herself. It was characteristic of her that she made no allusion to the past scene. She had a book in her hand. “I came across this in an old book-shop the other day,” she said. “I am fond of prowling about dusty shelves; I suppose I shall end by becoming a bibliomaniac. This is a collection of fragmentary verses which it is said the Crusaders used to sing at night on the battle-field. I thought you might use it.”

Quintard looked as pleased as a boy. “It was very good of you to think of me,” he said impulsively, “and I shall make use of it. But tell me what you think of this last yarn.”

“It is magnificent,” said Hermia; “I believe you are that rarest object in the history of the world—a poet.”

“I have written miles of it, and have made some of the most beautiful bonfires in history.”

Hermia laughed. “Could you never be consistently serious?”

“Yes, I could,” said Quintard, briefly.

Hermia looked at the door. “Higgins is coming to announce luncheon,” she said.