His Majesty’s chuckle sounded. They were gone forever, the pet pests, he exulted. Ignorance should no longer be her bliss. ’T were folly for her not to be wise. Why shirk responsibility for the idea born of their acquaintance--one wickeder, therefore more seducing, than any he alone had conceived? His further explication scorched her mind more hotly than did his breath her cheek. Physical desire he might not have. Yet was not its source, more than in the case of other passions, a state of mind? Irrefutable proof lay in the fact that desire wakened or slept as mortals fell in or out of love. Did not the city rake, accustomed to think of satisfaction as a necessity of his being, indulge it without love? And the libertine husband--why did he seek it from fresh subjects if not that his mind, wearied of his wife, must be freshly inspired? With every tale told him by Dolores these past nights and nights, Satan had measured his mentality by that of each of her earthly Don Juans. Averse at first to the weakness of love, he had come to recognize it as the match which would fire his affections and, thence, his desire. When he considered the state of mind into which he could get through hate---- He had come to the acknowledgment that, without love, he had missed mightily. Now, he longed to strike the ineffectual looking lucifer. Since, however, any satisfaction or outcome of their alliance must result, more than in mortal alliances, from a state of mind, he wished Dolores also to long for love. That was why he plead when he might compel. He could not risk an heir warped in his evil nature as had been the Cabots’ in body. No toy pace-setter for the sins of Satan the Second! She was the match to fire his imagination, he told her. She was the seemingly insipid drink which---- He interrupted himself to lick his lips. That fellow Seff was right. One needed a nectarine. She was his nectarine. She was very visible, as yet the most material of shades. The ways of the world still controlled her. Once his wishes were her own, she would of her own accord lift the stronger cup to his lips; would press the cheek of ripe fruit against his teeth. Already she had felt an impulse toward him. No use for her to deny that in the throne-room that afternoon, just before they had been interrupted---- “No. _No._” The very necessity of Dolores’ denial, however italicized in her consciousness the knowledge that she lied. As Satan passed his hand under her arm and pressed her bust, she shrank from him with moaned aversion for the thought back of the caress. He _was_ like Vincent Seff. The offense had been the shopman’s on that first day so very long ago, when she had begun to learn of men. Then, as now, she had been speechless from apprehension. Had that apprehension come from subconscious knowledge of herself more than of the man?