"There," he said,--in his voice the hoarse burr, and in his manner the incoherence, of a man fast nearing the irresponsible edge of passion, "how's that--better. Hey? Uh?" He slipped an arm around her waist. Daisy caught her lip under her teeth to keep from laughing outright as she glanced around into his red, flaming face. She leaned a little away from him, one toe alertly on the floor, the other dangling. "I suppose," she said, coolly, "you think you're pretty smart, don't you? Is this why the last girl left?" "I guess no-ot," Harrison's voice had the emphasis of truth as he had a momentary mental picture of Alice sitting where Daisy sat now, "that sour-mugged English rake-handle! I--I couldn't love a girl with a face like that, little one. You know that, don't y'? Uh?" The arm about Daisy's waist squeezed her. "C'm on--give us a little baby kiss." "Nothing slow about you, is there?" commented Daisy, the two watchful points of light in her eyes dancing like dagger-tips. Her employer's answer to this apparent compliment was to bring his other arm off the table and place it about her. Daisy never, even for the space of one lid-flash, ceased to watch the red intemperate face whose skin was now commencing to twitch in places like the hide of a horse under fly-bites. Passion had the man beyond speech now. Presently there would be a contraction of the eyelids, making the eyes small and round and wicked and ugly. Then there would be a leap of flame in the constricted irises, the sign that lust's madness had broken loose. Daisy, to whom these signals, in their course and succession, were familiar from many a perusal of many a masculine face, watched Harrison's features as keenly, and almost as coolly, as a doctor-specialist watches the lineaments of a patient in a crisis. At the moment when she saw restraint was going, just before the warning flame leapt, Daisy Nixon leaned away and put her palm against his chest. "I won't kiss you," she said, flashing her lids up and down, "for nothing." Harrison took his right hand from about her and thrust it into his pocket. He pulled out a great roll of bills, and made to strip one off. "Give me it all!" cried Daisy, keeping her palm against his chest, where she could feel the powerful, lustful heart hammering. "All!" Harrison managed to blurt, huskily, throwing his brows up in oaf-like protest, "all! Why, there's fifteen hundred dollars in that bunch!" "Give it to me," repeated Daisy, clear-toned, "or else let me go." Harrison was too far advanced in his midnight madness to accept the saner alternative. He thrust the roll of bills into her hand. "Now take away your hands a minute," said Daisy Nixon. As Harrison, all his attention concentrated on the mastering impulse of the moment, half-involuntarily obeyed the brisk request, she sprang with a lightning movement off his knee and away.