Truxton King

"We haven't time for them," she interrupted, with mock despair in her face. "Besides, I said we cannot discuss it. It requires no learned argument to move me, one way or the other. I can decide for myself."

"You should divorce him," he said harshly.

She laughed easily, softly. "My good friend, if I did that, I'd lose your friendship." He opened his lips to remonstrate, but suddenly caught the undercurrent of the naive remark.

"By Jove," he said, his eyes glowing, "you must not risk finding me too obtuse."

"Bravo!" she cried. "You are improving."

"I could provide a splendid substitute for the friendship you speak of," he said coolly.

"Poof! What is that to me? I could have a hundred lovers--but, ach, friends are the scarcest things in the world. I prefer friendship. It lasts. There! I see disapproval in your face! You Americans are so literal." She gazed into the fireplace for a moment, her lips parted in a whimsical smile. He waited for her to go on; the words were on her tongue's end, he could tell. "A divorce at twenty-five. I believe that is the accepted age, isn't it? If one gets beyond that, she--but, enough of this!" She sprang to her feet and stood before him, the flash dying in her eyes even as it was born that he might see so briefly. "We diverge! You must go soon. It is best not to be seen leaving here at a very late hour--especially as my father is known to be away. I am afraid of Peter Brutus. He is here to watch--everybody."

She was leaning against the great carved mantel post, a tall, slender, lissome creature, exquisitely gowned in rarest Irish lace, her bare neck and shoulders gleaming white against the dull timbers beyond, the faint glow from the embers creeping up to her face with the insistence of a maiden's flush. He gazed in rapt admiration, his heart thumping like fury in his great breast. She was little more than a girl, this wife of old Marlanx, and yet how wise, how clever, how brilliant she was!

A face of unusual pallor and extremely patrician in its modelling, surmounted by a coiffure so black that it could be compared only to ebony--black and almost gleaming with the life that was in it. It came low on her forehead, shading the wondrous dark eyes--eyes that were a deep yellowish green in their division between grey and black, eyes that were soft and luminous and unwaveringly steadfast, impelling in their power to fascinate, yet even more dangerously compassionate when put to the test that tries woman's vanity.