Kiki.

"Tea?" she said, turning to him with an amused look, the little button pressed against her thin, sharp row of teeth, that were clear and tiny as a child's.

"No, of course not," he said furiously.

"No tea, Kiki," she said, in that same round, musical tone from which she seldom varied. She held the button in her long fingers, caressing her cheek with it, and, looking at him with half-closed eyes, repeated:

"Sit down."

Though the forward movement of Slade had been unconscious and quite devoid of any personal object, he was angrily aware that she had availed herself of his action to introduce a tantalizing defiance which awakened all the savage in him, as he realized the helplessness of his crude strength before the raillery that shone from her eyes.

He drew his chair closer to her, sat down on its edge, one knee forward, his chin in his hand half concealing his face, looking at her with the shrewd cruelty of a prosecuting attorney.

"What's your game?" he said.

"The game itself," she answered, with a little animation in her eyes and a scarcely perceptible, gradual turning of her whole body toward him.

"What's your game?" he repeated.

She looked at him a moment as she might have looked at a child, and then, imitating the gesture with which he had sunk his chin in his palm, said:

"What a convenient formula! And is that the way you always begin?"

"Perhaps."

"Do you know," she continued, "it is extraordinary how simple you big men—you trust kings—are. You have the vision of an eagle on one side, and the groping glance of a baby when you deal with us. Sometimes I think that it's all instinct, that all you understand is to throw down what resists you—that you haven't great minds at all, and that that is all that interests you in business and in us. That is why a big man will always end up by meeting some little woman who will lead him around by the nose. Any little fool of a woman who knows enough never to cease resisting you can do it."

"Do you like me?" he said brutally.

"Yes."

"Much?"

"Quite a good deal."

"Are you planning to marry me?"

She smiled her languid, amused smile without shifting her glance from his.

"Why don't you come to the point?" she said.

"What do you mean?"

"I don't have to ask your game; I know it."

"What do you know?"

"Shall I tell you why you came here at a moment when you are at bay, attacked everywhere?"

"Why?"

"To find out what I know about Majendie."

"Do you know anything?"

"He is coming here tonight," she said.

"No, that is not it," he said scornfully, rising and again approaching her. "You know better. You exhilarate me—you wake me up; and I need to be stimulated. So you've got it back in your little brain to marry me," he said, looking down with amused contemplation at the reclining figure, that was not so much human as a perfumed bed of flowers; "that is, if I pull through and keep my head above water."

He hesitated a moment, and then said:

"Why did you keep me waiting? Just to annoy me?"

"I wonder," she said, looking up from under her eyelashes at his towering figure. "Perhaps it was to teach you some things are difficult."

"That's it, eh?"

"Perhaps—and I'm afraid I shall irritate you many more times."

He took a step nearer and said abruptly:

"Look out! I don't play fair."

"Neither do I," she said.

She took the button up again, frowning in a nonchalant way, and held it a moment while she waited for his decision. He shrugged his shoulders and stood back, taking several steps toward the center of the room.

"Listen, John G. Slade," she said, her tone changing from the felinely feminine to the matter-of-fact, "don't let's continue as children. You are no match for me at this game. I warn you. Come. Be direct. Will you have me as an ally?"

He turned and looked at her, considering.

"In what way?"

"Is it of importance to you to know the probable fate of Majendie and the Atlantic Trust?"

"Yes—in a way."

"I may have means of learning just that information tonight."

"What do you want in return?"

"Full confidence. I want two questions answered."

"What?"

She had raised herself to a sitting position out of the languor which was not the indolence of the Oriental, but rather the volcanic slumbering of the Slav, always ready to break forth into sudden tremendous exertion.

"Can the Associated Trust meet its Wednesday obligations without assistance?"

"And second?" he said, amazed at the detailed knowledge that her question implied.

"Second, if it can't, will the Clearing-house help it through?"

"What difference to you would it make to know?"

"It would."

"How long have you known Bernard Majendie?" he said slowly.

She accepted the question as a rebuff.

"There are my terms," she said, sinking back on the couch. "You don't wish an ally, then?"

"No."

"You don't trust me?"

"No."

"I knew you wouldn't," she said indolently; "and yet, I could help you more than you think."

"I trusted a man once," he said scornfully. "I have never made that mistake with a woman."

"As you wish."

"Are you trying a flyer?" he said, smiling. "That's the game, is it—a tip?"

"I have told you," she said coldly and in a tone that carried conviction, "that what interests me is to win the game itself, the excitement and the perils. And I have been behind the scenes many times."

"I believe it," he said abruptly. "I should like to hear—"

"I am a woman who keeps the secrets of others and her own," she answered, interrupting his question.

"And if you marry?" he said curiously.

"Even then." She dismissed the return to the personal with the first quick movement of her hand and continued: "I should say, you are the best hated man in Wall Street."

"That's not exactly inside information."

"No one is going to come to your help out of friendship."

"True."