Her eyes never left his face. He knew that she was exerting all the hypnotic power she possessed to subject him to her will. He had no doubt that she had cultivated that power to the utmost for years, under competent teachers, until she had become a master in its use. The power of exerting hypnotic influence is an attainment which is the consequence of study and practice; it is not a gift. One may learn it just as one may learn to be a doctor, or a lawyer, or a dentist. Here, then, was the secret of what this woman had been able to accomplish in her defiance of authority and in her undoing of the men who had stood in her way in the past. Her weapon had been hypnotism, and with it she had lured that Russian prince, that Duc de Luvois, that Austrian, and others to their death. Slowly that free hand of hers stroked the backs of his. Brightly, almost with a suggestion of living fire, her big eyes burned into his. He felt a tightening at his throat. There was a sensation as if a rubber band wound tightly around his brows; but he controlled himself. He managed to fix his mind upon the object of his presence there, and he felt that he could resist her, even unto the end. Her victims had not suspected this quality in her. They had been men who had thought that she was succumbing to them rather than they to her. He forced his eyes to express all that she wished to show, or to give out that lack of expression which would assure her that she was succeeding. All the while that they stood there, facing each other, with their hands clasped, she kept on murmuring to him in a low voice, but uttering words that would have been meaningless under any other circumstances. It was the droning of her voice, the soft cadences of it, that tided in what she had undertaken to do. She was so accustomed to success, so entirely unfamiliar with failure, that she could not see that her effort was failing, and that Nick Carter was just as much the master of himself now as when he entered the parlor with her. In the struggle that Nick had with himself when she first began to attempt the exertion of her power, beads of perspiration came out upon his brow. The effort with his own will brought to his face that strained expression which she had expected to see there as a result of her own influence. Presently she drew him toward one of the large armchairs that were in the room. She forced him gently down upon it, standing before him, holding his eyes still, and now stroking his forehead with her velvety touch. Nick knew then why other men had become her willing victims. He realized the depth of the pitfall that had been spread out for them, and how entirely willing they had been to cast themselves into it. He appeared to struggle against her power for a time, and then he permitted his eyes to close, as if he were indeed hypnotized—and then he heard a quick sigh of satisfaction escape her.