"I knew you'd agree with me," he said. "Say, what chance do I stand--honest, what do you believe she thinks of me?" "Honest, I never heard her say. It is likely she hasn't begun to think of it at all. Women are slower than men about such things. How long have you been--in love with her?" "Of course, I've been that way ever since I saw her first--ever since I was a student, picking prunes for her uncle, and went down and helped her run a bull off her place. I thought then that I never saw nicer eyes or a more ladylike girl. She's always given me the glassy eye. I think she hates me--no, it isn't that, either. She just feels superior to me." "Oh, perhaps not that!" "Well, anyhow, I was in college and any one girl looked about the same to me as any other--" Bertram wrinkled his brows in contempt for his utter, undeveloped youngness of two years before--"but I remembered her always. When I saw her sitting in the Hotel Marseillaise that evening, I felt queer; and after I called on her I just knew I had it. Funny, you coming in that afternoon. You and I have hit it off so well, and here I'm confiding in you! It was a regular luck sign, I think." Kate's voice, when she spoke, fell to its deeper, richer tones. "And I'm sure I feel flattered--any girl would. I really thank you--you don't know how much." "And you'll help me, won't you?" "With my advice--yes." "Well, that's all I want. If I win this game, I want to win it square. "Say, you are sure the goods. You're as pretty--it wouldn't be natural for a man to say you're as pretty as she is, but a man can just look at you and wonder--" and here he dropped one of his hands gently upon hers. She let it rest there a moment before she drew away. "We'd better be going back," she said. "They'll think it's I and not Eleanor, if we stay so long." As they started, he stooped to get her another drink. Standing above him, her hand lifted toward her student beri, she bent her gaze on his back. A peculiar look it was, as though an effort against pain. It faded into an expression like hunger. CHAPTER VIII It seemed afterward to Bertram Chester, reviewing the early events of a life in which he was well pleased, that his real attack on things, his virtual beginning, came with that house-party of the Masters's. The victory of his smile on the staircase he followed up that evening to a general conquest. For Masters, when dinner was over, brewed a hot punch. They drank it about the driftwood fire, and even the severe Marion Slater relaxed and made merry. The essence of the gods strips self-control and delicacy first, so that the finer wit goes by without tribute of a laugh and the wit of poked fingers--especially if it be sauced by personality--rules at the board. After the punch had worked sunshine in them, the poked finger of this young barbarian was more compelling than the sallies of Masters or the mimicry of Harry Banks.