“If I only dared tell her now,” said Frost to himself, “but it’s not my affair.” He saw the feminine droop of her head, and the dainty curve of her beautiful arm. “She is about to weep,” he muttered. Miss Baxter, who had been amusing herself with other revelers, turned to interrupt: “Mr. Frost, you haven’t given him dead away?” This, so recklessly spoken, only added to Cherokee’s discomfort. A flush rose to her cheek. She asked, with partial scorn: “Do you think he should have aroused my interest without satisfying it?” “Please forgive him, he didn’t intend to be so rude; besides, he would have told you had I not interrupted. It was thoughtless of you to make mention of it,” she said, reproachfully, to the artist. The while he seemed oddly enjoying the girl’s strange dry-eyed sorrow. Just here, Fred Stanhope came up to tell them the evening pleasures were done. Cherokee could have told him that sometime before. Willard Frost looked remarkably bright and handsome as he walked away with Miss Baxter leaning upon his arm. “What made you punish that poor girl so? What pleasure was there in giving Mr. Milburn away, especially since you were the entire cause of it?” she went on earnestly, and a trifle dramatically. “A man has no right to give another away--no right--he should----” “But Frances,” remonstrated Frost, lightly, and apparently unimpressed by her theory, “I was just dying to tell her that Milburn was as drunk as a duchess.” CHAPTER V. THE IMAGE OF BEAUTIFUL SIN. In his fashionable apartments, Willard Frost walked back and forth in his loose dressing-gown. Rustling about the room, his softly slippered feet making no noise on the floor, he moved like a refined tiger--looked like “some enchanted marquis of the impenitently wicked sort, in story, whose periodical change into tiger from man was either just going off or just coming on.” A good opportunity for consideration, surrounded by the advantages of solitude. He moved from end to end of his voluptuous room, looking now and again at a picture which hung just above a Persian couch, covered with a half dozen embroidered pillows. What unmanageable thoughts ran riot in his head, as he surveyed the superb image and thought that only one thing was wanting--the breath of life--for which he had waited through all these months. For two heavy hours he walked and thought; now he would heave a long, low sigh, then hold his breath again. When at last he dropped down upon his soft bed, he lay and wondered if the world would go his way--the way of his love for a woman. * * * * * * Cherokee met Willard Frost on Broadway the next morning--he had started to see her. “Let me go back with you and we will lunch together--what do you say?” he proposed. “Very well, for I am positively worn out to begin with the day, and a rest with you will refresh me,” she said sweetly.