"Say--Jessie," he breathed hotly. "You're--you're fine." His words were almost involuntary. It was as though they were a mere verbal expression of what was passing through his mind, and made without thought of addressing her. He was almost powerless in his self-control before her beauty. And Jessie's conscience in its weakly life could not hold out before the ardor of his assault. Her eyelids lowered. She stood waiting, and in a moment the bold invader held her crushed in his arms. She lay passive, yielding to his caresses for some moments. Then of a sudden she stirred restlessly. She struggled weakly to free herself. Then, as his torrential kisses continued, sweeping her lips, her eyes, her cheeks, her hair, something like fear took hold of her. Her struggles suddenly became real, and at last she stood back panting, but with her young heart mutely stirred to a passionate response. Nor was it difficult, as they stood thus, to understand how nature rose dominant over all that belonged to the higher spiritual side of the woman. The wonderful virility in her demanded life in the full flood of its tide, and here, standing before her, was the embodiment of all her natural, if baser, ideals. The man was a handsome, picturesque creature bred on lines of the purer strains. He had little enough about him of the rough camp in which she lived. He brought with him an atmosphere of cities, an atmosphere she yearned for. It was in his dress, in his speech, in the bold daring of his handsome eyes. She saw in his face the high breeding of an ancient lineage. There was such a refinement in the delicate chiseling of his well-molded features. His brows were widely expressive of a strong intellect. His nose possessed that wonderful aquilinity associated with the highest type of Indian. His cheeks were smooth, and of a delicacy which threw into relief the perfect model of the frame beneath them. His clean-shaven mouth and chin suggested all that which a woman most desires to behold in a man. His figure was tall and muscular, straight-limbed and spare; while in his glowing eyes shone an irresistible courage, a fire of passion, and such a purpose as few women could withstand. And so the wife of Scipio admitted her defeat and yielded the play of all her puny arts, that she might appear sightly in his eyes. But she only saw him as he wished her to see him. He showed her the outward man. The inner man was something not yet for her to probe. He was one of Nature's anachronisms. She had covered a spirit which was of the hideous stock from which he sprang with a gilding of superlative manhood. His name was James, a name which, in years long past, the Western world of America had learned to hate with a bitterness rarely equaled. But all that was almost forgotten, and this man, by reason of his manner, which was genial, open-handed, even somewhat magnificent, rarely failed, at first, to obtain the good-will of those with whom he came into contact.