“No, nor wouldn’t if I could. Love is weakening--orangeade for temperance fools like General Sam. What is it anyhow? Some old scientist has defined it as ‘merely the attraction of billions of atoms, electrically charged in the system, corresponding to the same number of the same sort of atoms in a person of the opposite sex.’ There you have it. What is so marvelous about that--what to make such a to-do over?” “That definition doesn’t sound right to me.” Dolores’ eyes gazed out over the garden with a waiting look. It was as if, within their shadows of a purple that shamed the bourgainvillae bloom, hope was hiding in the arbor. The King watched her in his considering way. His arm stretched along the back of the bench. When convinced that she had forgotten his presence, he suddenly snapped his strong, long fingers around the nape of her neck. With a smothered scream, Dolores tried to shake off his clutch. Never from a mortal man had she felt a touch so offensive, yet so loathsomely attracting. “Please release me. You are so--so intense!” “Quite too intense”--Satan drew back his lips over his teeth in a bestial smile--“and in the imperative tense. Remember, Dame Dolores, that what I want, I do not ask. I take.” Sliding his hand down her arm, he drew her to her feet. “Considering that, how do you like the prospect of this High Priestess job?” “I simply couldn’t do such things as you propose,” she dared his displeasure to protest. “I should fail dismally, for I am not at heart the sort you think. You say that love weakens one, but my spirit would die, I know, if I cast love out and tried to hate. You would be disappointed in me and your plans planned in vain. If success is what you demand, choose some one stronger in hate than I--some one who----” “Playing in form to the last!” he commented. “You are wise. There really is no comparison between this appointment and one to the Wanton’s Well or, say, the Traitors to Mothers. You, by the way, are a native daughter to the last-named state. Did that strike you the other day? According to your own account, you killed your mother before the poor thing could so much as say ‘top o’ the morning.’” “At least let me think it over. Let me finish the séances first,” Dolores plead, under the iron of his reminder. “I am exhausted each night when they are over and busy all the next day planning how best I may continue to entertain Your Lowness. A new undertaking might make me a failure in both.” “There is something to that, unless----” He peered down at her suspiciously. “You’re not aspiring to outwit me by dragging out that life story indefinitely? The new job _will_ tax your concentration, no doubt of it. And you do look all in after your regular evening stunt. All right. You may have one week after the end of the séances in which to make up such of your mind as I have not made up for you. But I say----” “Yes, Your---- Yes, Pluto?”