The word beautiful does not describe her. She was alluring. She drew men to her as a charged magnet draws particles of steel. Once amenable to her influence, they were apparently as powerless to resist her as those same bits of steel are helpless under that attraction. She halted directly in front of him. Her eyes, luminously bright, glowed upon him. He felt the thrill of them. He realized that there was something more than mere magnetism in that gaze, too. There was a quality about it that was hypnotic. He knew that at that moment she was exerting all the latent powers within her to bring him under the spell of her charms. Nick Carter had anticipated something of this sort, and he was prepared for it. He had suggested to the chief that there were occasions when it was well to play one’s cards face up on the table, and up to this point he had done that very thing. He had purposely thrust himself in this woman’s way in order that she might have all the opportunity she desired to exert her powers of fascination—for Nick Carter intended all along to appear to yield to them. That was the game he had intended, from the moment her presence in Paris was known to him, to play. He meant to let her suppose that he was the same sort of weakling as the others had been, who were inimical to her interests. In a word, _he meant to appear to become her willing victim_. He realized that he had an extremely difficult part to play. He knew what her intelligence was and that she would be as shrewd as he in every move that she might make—unless her supreme confidence in her own powers, so many times successful with others, should lead her astray. But egotism, too much self-confidence, is the rock upon which many a one has foundered. Nick Carter believed it to be the one which would be the undoing of this brilliant woman, who had so successfully defied the police departments of all of Europe, and, figuratively, snapped her fingers at them. As she approached him across the floor he arose and faced her. When she smiled into his eyes he compelled his own to glow with an answering fire. When she reached out one hand toward him, in a half pathetic, half pleading gesture, he extended both his own and took it between them and held it there. “Mr. Carter,” she said. “Yes?” he replied. “You will spare me, won’t you?” “Spare you? From what?” “From the consequences of the investigation you are making. See, I throw myself upon your mercy; I plead with you; I am pleading with you now.” She held his eyes with her own. Her other hand reached forward and joined the first one resting upon both of his. They were standing in the middle of the room. They were very close together. Juno’s eyes were glowing strangely, and Nick, playing his part, wondered if, after all, he had not dared too much. She was alluring. She was fascinating. She had the power of casting a spell, and already he was cognizant of the force of it.