In a moment their bodies were in close embrace, he enfolding her within his mighty and powerful grasp. After a moment, however, he put her gently from him, and said: “You but mock me by showing me a view of Paradise, only to snatch the entrancing picture from my eyes.” “No,” she said, exalted through the intensity of her artistic emotion, “I feel a strange, uncontrollable desire to own you, body and soul.” “I fear, I dream, I dream,” said Paul, but Ouida hurried on: “You are a giant. You could take any one of these pigmies that flutter and buzz about me, in your arms, and could crush life completely out. I hate them all. I would throttle, and at the same time strangle, the indignation of society. I would bitterly enrage these dogs who fawn on me.” “And use me as the instrument? What, then, shall become of me?” said Paul. “You? Why, Paul, you shall be the central moving figure,” said Ouida. “What care I? Use me as you will. ’Tis enough for me to know that you but reach your hand.” “Come to my arms then again,” she cried in the ecstacy of this novel and entrancing emotion. “Let us revel in delight, you pauper! You dog! You base born thing, to whom vile society would scarcely throw a crumb!” “Oh, the delight,” said Paul, “of spurning these little creatures. A month of such sweet vengeance, and you may have my life.” “I’ll dress these mighty limbs of yours,” she cried. “I’ll flaunt your very baseness in their eyes. I’ll make them crawl to you for the price of a smile from me. They shall pay in deepest humiliation for the privilege of adoring me from afar. We, Paul, you and I, will richly repay society for its wrongs to us.” She seemed now exhausted from the intensity of her feelings. “Go now,” she said, tenderly; and without question Paul went away from her, exalted, bewildered, astonished, uplifted, amazed, but happy, and inwardly rejoicing at the wondrous change which had taken place in his fortunes. Poor fool! From his dizzy height he saw not the chasm yawning in greediness below. CHAPTER XIII. A RICH MAN’S BALL. A great social leader of the Metropolis had given a ball, to which had been invited not only the “Four Hundred,” but a large proportion of New York’s Bohemian Colony as well.