conscription had come to never remaining still. His ears were so small that they seemed almost a deformity. The nose, which was impressive and slightly pointed, told more of cunning than of sagacity; the mouth, open and pliant, was the mouth of the demagogue and the orator, which lets escape the torrent of phrases.

One divined the man who played at will the tyrant or the servitor, who browbeat the timid and flattered the strong, who bellowed in a police court, but who tiptoed for a favor and could on occasion listen obsequiously. Finally his jet hair, which he enforced into parting in the middle and plastered to his scalp, in the back rose like the comb of a cockatoo. This rebellious movement to the repression of the front was significant of the whole man.

When Mrs. Fargus returned with a tray all traces of emotion had vanished. Watching her, the lawyer voiced the amazement that had been in his mind from the first.

"Sheila, you are astonishingly pretty to-night."

"Really!" she said, and despite her alarm she sent a glance to the mirror.

Over the loose white muslin, free at the throat and at the elbows, she wore a filmy scarf of red chiffon, subtle as a mist, which, encircling her shoulders, came to a loose knot and fell to her feet in a sanguine line. It was a striking effect which perplexed the eye, and threw in bold relief the waves of her black hair and the rather high color of her complexion; but emphasized in the general voluptuousness the surprising contrast of the eyes which, gray with a slight blue tinge, were cold, without passion or enticement.

Intrigued at the contrast of her indifference with her first agitation, Bofinger was careful not to open the conversation, knowing that it is easier to penetrate the hypocrisy of an enforced question than to discover truth in a guarded answer.

Mrs. Fargus, seeing at last that the situation compelled her to speak, rested her chin on her palm and said as though to herself:

"So Fargus is dead!"

"Eh, eh!" the lawyer cried instantly, shooting a sharp look, "a moment ago that overwhelmed you. But you are reconciled already, I suppose."

She showed some confusion, but returned immediately:

"Sure I'm shocked; poor fellow, after all he did love me."

Displeased to find her self-possessed, the lawyer, not to waken her mistrust, seemed to accept her attitude by launching into a diatribe.

"Yes, yes, cling to your respectability. You women are all the same. Virtue always! Do you do it to fool us or yourselves? Come now, you know that old Fargus's death is a stroke of luck! Why the deuce, then, don't you admit it?"

"You don't understand," she said coldly.

He searched her face with aroused curiosity, saying to himself, "No, my lady, you bet I don't." Then continuing his plan of battle he occupied himself with his plate.

"You brought him, the body, back," she asked presently.

"No," he answered irritably, and pushed back his plate with impatience.

"Why not?" she asked, noticing his annoyance.

"That is a long story and goes with the rest," he said rising. "Now, my dear, we'll get down to it."

In the parlor, as he was taking a chair, he recollected himself and demanded with a jerk of his head:

"Any one up there?"

"I sent the girl away," she answered, "as you said."

"Nevertheless," he replied slowly, "I guess I'll satisfy myself of that."

"Yes, I supposed you would," she said with a shrug, "I left the gas on."

The unlooked-for reply halted him. He vacillated a moment suspiciously, wondering whether to accept the situation, but, the shyster prevailing, he turned on his heel and went up the stairs.

The woman smiled with the consciousness of a first advantage. But no sooner did the steps creak than she abandoned herself to a paroxysm of despair, twisting and turning the scarf in her hands until it cut them, as though to fight with the physical sting the agony of the mind. Yet in this violent return to her first agitation there was nothing to suggest grief for another; rather she seemed a prey to the torments of the gambler who, by a sudden upset, sees a fortune elude his fingers, dissipating in the air. She was, at the first glance, of that gay and fragile class who comprehend nothing but pleasure and see pleasure bounded only by the narrow limits of youth, into which they wish to compress all emotions, all desires, and all sensations; who pursue their ideals, palpitating and with bandaged eyes, and are consumed alike by their gratification and their hunger. On them weigh perhaps the heaviest the inequalities of society. Mixtures of desires and scruples, peculiarly American, swayed by conflicting ideals and prejudices, they wish to taste of the glittering world at any price except at the price of outward respectability. A young man attracted to Sheila Fargus by her facile beauty would have mistaken her for an adventuress or a saint. A man of the world, knowing her weakness and her fetishes, would have recognized that she might become either.

As soon as the step of Bofinger was heard returning, she drew herself hastily together, but the lawyer, to further satisfy himself, passed into the kitchen.

She rose, inhaled a long breath, extended her arms as though to shake off the rigidity of her emotion, and finding herself pale, pinched her cheeks. The lawyer returned too conscious of his tactical disadvantage to notice the traces of her agitation.

"So you feel at rest now," she said maliciously.

"My dear, take it as a tribute to you," he answered. "You had the air of truth but you might have been—"

"More clever?"

"Exactly," he said. "You can't be sure with a woman."

To shut off further reference he cast himself back in his chair, brought his fingers to a cage, and demanded, as though from impulse, "Sheila, answer this—and carefully, for it is vital. Before Fargus left for Mexico did he show any suspicion?"

"Why, no," she answered, too visibly surprised not to be telling the truth; "sure he didn't."

"What, not the slightest suspicion of our relations?" he persisted. "Think well,—Fargus who was suspicion itself! And he didn't at some time suspect either you or me!"

She reflected a moment, started to answer, and then shook her head.

"No, no, not once."

The hesitation was not lost on the lawyer, who continued:

"But did he seem much in love?"

"Why, he adored me!" she cried. She examined him curiously, noting again his restrained irritation, and asked, "What funny questions! Why do you ask them?"

"On account of a number of suspicious circumstances," he answered irritably. "Well, you know Fargus; he was not an ordinary man. However—"

He took up his documents, sifting them to count them. Then, at the moment when Sheila, preparing to listen, was off her guard, he launched the question he had held in reserve.

"Did he tell you why he went to Mexico?"

"Why," she said, "I suppose, on business."

"He told you what business."

"No."

The two looked in each other's eyes.

"She lies," thought the lawyer.

"He knows I lie," she said to herself, palpitating, but she did not dare avert her glance.

CHAPTER II IN THE EYES OF THE LAW

To Sheila's surprise, instead of the browbeating she had learned to expect, she saw that for some