atmosphere. He was acutely conscious of small extraneous things, of the perfume of a great bowl of hyacinths, the ticking of a tiny French clock, the restless drumming of her finger tips upon the arm of her chair. All the time he seemed actually to feel her eyes, commanding, impelling, beseeching him to turn round. He did so at last, and looked her full in the face. 

"Lady Ruth," he said, "will you favor me with an answer to my message?" 

"Certainly," she answered, smiling quite naturally. "I will come and see Sir Wingrave Seton at four o'clock tomorrow afternoon. You can tell him that I think it rather an extraordinary request, but under the circumstances I will do as he suggests. He is staying at the Clarence, I presume, under his own name? I shall have no difficulty in finding him?" 

"He is staying there under his own name," Aynesworth answered, "and I will see that you have no difficulty." 

"So kind of you," she murmured, holding out her hand. And again there was something mysterious in her eyes as she raised them to him, as though there existed between them already some understanding which mocked the conventionality of her words. Aynesworth left the house, and lit a cigarette upon the pavement outside with a little sigh of relief. He felt somehow humiliated. Did she fancy, he wondered, that he was a callow boy to dance to any tune of her piping--that he had never before seen a beautiful woman who wanted her own way? 

THE GOSPEL OF HATE 

"And what," Wingrave asked his secretary as they sat at dinner that night, "did you think of Lady Ruth?" 

"In plain words, I should not like to tell you," Aynesworth answered. "I only hope that you will not send me to see her again." 

"Why not?" 

"Lady Ruth," Aynesworth answered deliberately, "is a very beautiful woman, with all the most dangerous gifts of Eve when she wanted her own way. She did me the scanty honor of appraising me as an easy victim, and she asked questions." 

"For instance?" 

"She wanted me to tell her if you still had in your possession certain letters of hers," Aynesworth said. 

"Good! What did you say?" 

"I told her, of course," Aynesworth continued, "that having been in your service for a few hours only, I was scarcely in 

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