"Now we shall see," he said to himself, with a smile, gazing at the ring in the palm of his hand with a man’s contemptuous contemplation of the stone which could hold such fascination over a woman’s soul. For him it was absolutely necessary, as a first step toward his conquest of all his enemies, to feel his power over this one present resistance. The idea that had come into his head restored his good humor and aroused in him a certain joy of energy. He had forgot momentarily his errand, absorbed in his own battle for existence. "Today is Thursday," he said, with renewed energy. "Next Wednesday will be the crisis. I must find out what Majendie is going to do. Snelling’s the man to know—or Garraboy." The car stopped. He sprang out and, without giving his name, entered the elevator. At the apartment a Japanese servant took his things and ushered him into the low-lit greens of the studio, which ran the height of the two floors that formed the duplex apartment. Mrs. Rita Kildair was stretched on a low Récamier sofa, watching him with amused eyes as he entered with that atmosphere of strife and fury that seemed always to play about him. She waited until he had come to her side before she raised her hand to his, in a gesture that had no animation, saying: "How do you do?" Something in the tranquil, amused self-possession of her pose made him stupidly repeat the question. Then, forgetting his resolve to show no impatience, he said impetuously: "Why did you keep me waiting?" "Because I did not wish to see your highness then." "Not dressed?" "No, I was simply amusing myself with a very nice boy." "Who?" She smiled, and, without heed to his question, motioned him to a chair with a little gesture, not of her arm, but of her fingers, on which she wore several rings of unusual luster. She had, as a woman, that same magnetic self-consciousness that distinguishes the great actress, aware that every eye is focused on her and that the slightest change of her hand or shift of her head has an instantaneous importance. Slade obeyed her with a sudden sense of warm content. "Smoke?" he said, taking out a cigar. "Permission?" He helped himself to a match, sunk himself in the great chair, crossed his legs, and looked at her. Rita Kildair gave that complex appearance of a woman much younger than she seemed, or of a woman much older. She was at that mental phase in her life when she exhaled to the fullest that perfume of mystery which is the most feminine and irresistible of all the powers that a woman exerts over the masculine imagination, if indeed it is not the sum of all seductions. The inexplicable in her own life and individuality was heightened in every way by the subservience of outward things, whether by calculation or by an instinctive sense of interpretation.