The life of Marise Sorel was so full, the pattern of each day so gaily embroidered with emotions and incidents, that she was surprised at her own excitement. She did not, however, try to quench it. She loved to feel that, in spite of the adulation she received, one side of her nature was as fresh, as unspoiled, as a child's. And she was as guiltily pleased as a child when, at twenty minutes before three on Sunday afternoon, her mother went down to a waiting taxi with Zélie Marks. Patronising the Pole and choosing a design would eat up an hour, Marise had calculated. She had put on a white dress of the simplicity whose price is beyond rubies. Her hair was in a great gleaming knot of gold at the nape of her neck. She looked about sixteen, and felt it. When the bell of the telephone rang at three minutes before three, she thrilled all over. "A gentleman asking for Mademoiselle. He says he has an appointment," announced Céline at the 'phone. "Any name?" Marise inquired. Céline put her lips to the instrument, the receiver to her ear. "The gentleman has given no name, because he is expected. But if Mademoiselle wishes that I insist----?" "No. Tell them he's to come up at once. And, Céline, be ready to open the door of the suite." The Frenchwoman went out noiselessly: Marise rushed to the long mirror, in front of which tall, scented roses were banked. Her cheeks were very pink. She was like a rose herself. But hastily she rubbed her little nose with powder from a vanity box. The gold case was only just snapped shut, and Marise seated with a book, when she heard a sound in the vestibule. He had come! CHAPTER VII SAMSON AGONISTES Marise raised her eyes from an uncut volume of poems, and looked into the face of--Samson. The shock of disillusion was so cruel that the girl felt faint. She was giddy, as if she had stooped too long over a hot fire and risen abruptly. So this--_this_--was her Man of Mystery, he who had held in unseen hands more than half her thoughts for a delicious fortnight! She had deigned to advertise in a newspaper for the pleasure of meeting this lout, spurned by his smart regiment, despite his Victoria Cross: this cad, whose notion of revenge was to explode as a bomb a bottle of ginger-beer! The warm glow of anticipation was chilled to ice. The hands that tightened on the book went suddenly cold. Marise did not know what to do. She wavered between an impulse to be rude and the dutiful decency of a hostess. Meanwhile, forgetting to act, she stared at the tall figure as if at an approaching executioner. No one but a blind man or a fool could have failed to see in those beautiful eyes the blankness of disappointment. John Garth was neither blind nor a fool, and that look of hers was a sharp-edged axe which "hit him where he lived," as his bruised mind vaguely put it.