poverty? If we'd only had just a little between us. It's a question of courage. If we'd only had the courage to face things hand in hand we'd have got along somehow, I dare say. But we didn't have that quality, did we? We didn't believe enough in our dreams. That's the worst of life. She won't let you."

"Oh, the dreams!" she scoffed. Her color remained high, her eyes glittered, but with irritation, not tears. She suffered from an old laceration of the heart, the more wounding in that, for pride's sake, she must ever deny it expression. Eugene always took the attitude as if they together had renounced a mutual love, and often implied, without rancor, but with a forgiving, almost understanding tenderness, that the responsibility of their marred lives lay on her shoulders.

Perdita was of the twentieth century, but she was also a southern woman of many traditions, and she could not say the words which rose to her defensive lips: "Eugene, you have never asked me to face life hand in hand with you." He would with a glance, she could see it, feel it, convict her of blunted intuitions, of an inability to discern exquisite shades of emotion; and then he would express his love for her in glowing, passionate phrases, confusingly evasive, elusive beyond definition, committing himself to nothing.

And if this shifting of responsibility on her, this ardent skirting of a definite issue were premeditated or his unavoidable, temperamental way of viewing the matter, she could not tell. Conjecture was idle. Her knowledge of his character, her ready mental accusations and equally ready excuses, these comprising the sole weight of evidence, merely held the scales steady.

Eugene began to pick up, first one, then another, of the favors on the table, a smile, tender yet humorous, about his lips.

"By Jove, these are not so bad! They are rather stunning. You always did have a lot of feeling for form and color, Dita, but you wouldn't work. You weren't willing to drudge and to starve if necessary. That was because you lacked the clear vision. It wasn't always before you, a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night." None might doubt his sincerity or conviction now. It was mounting as flame. "Artistic and appreciative you are, Dita. All this trash shows it, but you lack the creative impulse. You were never meant to be a barefooted, tattered follower of the vision, a lodger in a new palace of dreams each night. You should build your house on the rock of substantial things, bread-and-butter facts.

"Oh, do not toss up your head in that wounded-stag manner. Good Lord! Isn't it enough that you are beautiful? And how beautiful! I'm almost tempted to cancel my passage and, instead of sailing to-morrow morning, stop here and paint you again. Really, I am. But what would it profit me? I'd just be sowing the seed for a new harvest of heartaches. Perdita, your destiny is written on your face." It was as if he willed to speak lightly. "It includes marrying a millionaire, and having your portrait painted by me. You'll never have an international reputation as a beauty until you do both." But in spite of his smile and his flippant words there was bitterness in his eyes.

She did not see that, but the lightness of his words and tone pricked her to an immediate decision, a decision which she had, unconsciously, postponed until she had seen him. Her face paled, her lips folded in a tight line.

"I am going to marry the millionaire," she said firmly enough, although there was a slight tremor in her voice. "It depends on you whether or not there is a portrait of Mrs. Cresswell Hepworth by Gresham." There was triumph in her eyes and voice as thus she lifted her pride from the dust.

"Cresswell Hepworth!" His astonishment was unbounded. "Perdita! I throw my hat at your feet. Cresswell Hepworth! The pick of the bunch. Wonderful! But," looking at her curiously, "how on earth did you meet him?"

"He heard of my amulet through a man I met at old Mrs. Huff's, Mr. Martin. He has a wonderful collection of amulets, and he wanted to buy it of me."

"But you didn't sell it?" he said quickly. "No, of course not. H'm-m. That old amulet. You laugh at my superstitions, Dita, but you must admit that it's queer the way it's interwoven with the history of our family."

He began to roll cigarettes and lay them with neat and exquisite regularity on the table beside him. His eyebrows were raised, his mouth twisted in a sort of rueful yet whimsical grimace. When he had finished rolling the sixth cigarette, he laid it in line with the others, an exact line, his eye was so true. Then at last he looked at her, and his cynical, earnest, mocking, enthusiastic face softened. His eyes enveloped her with tenderness. There was a heart-break in his smile.

"Ah, star-eyed Perdita, how shall I give you up? The only woman!" He mused a moment, and then repeated: "The only woman! If we had but had the courage to take the bitter with the sweet, Perdita."

Unwitting goad! It struck too deep for her to conceal the wound.

"You do not say 'can,' I observe, Eugene," she said laughingly, but there was an edge to her voice like that on finely tempered steel.

"No," he returned, his fingers busy with a rearrangement of the cigarettes; "you see it involves you and me. Not John Jones and Jane Smith, but you and me. Do you know what that means? Well, it means that it involves the inheritance and training of a good many generations. Do you think I do not know how you loathe all this?" He flicked with his fingers the dainty trifles on the table. "I know well the craving of your nature for splendor and beauty, how necessary they are to you, and how dinkiness and makeshifts irritate and depress you, take the heart out of you. That is one you, one Perdita. There is another. I saw her when I came in to-night. God, I wish I hadn't!" His voice dropped on this exclamation and she did not hear it. "She is young. Her beautiful, dark eyes ask love and give it. Her heart dreams of it. It is in every tone of her voice. These two are at war, the natural woman and the woman with her inherited love of ease and luxury and cultivated, artificial desires. Which is the stronger? Why, to-night"—he picked up one of the cigarettes and prepared to light it; his hands trembled, his face was white—"the woman who is ready to love. She would listen to me—to-night. I would hold her. Oh, what's the use?" He twisted his shoulders impatiently. Then he bent forward and tapped the table lightly but emphatically, as if to add weight to his words. "You'd listen to me to-night, I know that; but as sure as to-morrow's dawn I'd get a little note from you saying that the morn had brought wisdom. But, oh, I am glad I'm sailing to-morrow."

"So am I," she flashed out. "You think—you take too much for granted, Eugene."

"I dare say." His voice sounded flat. "No one ever appreciates renunciation. Well, it's out into the night in more senses than one." He rose and looked at her as she sat with downcast eyes, and half stretched out his arms toward her. Then as she too rose, he clasped his fingers about the back of her head and drew her face toward him, although she strove to avert it from him. "Good-by, sweetheart." Even she must believe in the ardor and sincerity of his tones. "Good-by, Perdita of the South." He kissed her lightly on one cheek and then the other. "Good-by, my jasmine flower."

He hesitated a moment in leaving the room, as if to turn and clasp her to him and bear her away; then he shut the door gently behind him and she heard his halting, hurried step upon the stair. She sat listening until its last echoes had died away, and then, casting her outstretched arms on the table, sending the favors and menus and candle-shades in a shower to the floor, she burst into a storm of tears.

There was a low, discreet, respectful knock, Olga's knock on the door leading into Mrs. Cresswell Hepworth's splendid apartments. Perdita started violently and came back to the present from her far world of dreaming. She had not even begun to