interested elsewhere during this period—the tension grew too strong for Alys Crumley. Nervous and high-strung, with her reservoir of human emotions undepleted by even a hard flirtation since her early youth, idealistic, romantic, and imaginative, she began to realise that with each long uninterrupted evening—Mrs. Crumley was the most tactful of parents—she was growing more femininely sensitive to this man's magnetism and charm, to his quick responsive mind, to the mobility under the surface of his lean hard face, to the suggestion of indomitable strength which was the chief characteristic of the new American race of men.

It was not long before she was exaggerating every attractive attribute he possessed until he no longer seemed what he was, a fine specimen of his type, but a glorified superbeing and the one desirable man on earth. Her sense of superiority over this "rather crude Western specimen who knew nothing but his job," and to whom she could teach so much, had protected her for a time, held her femaleness and imagination in abeyance, but insensibly his sheer masculinity swamped her, left her without a rock but pride to cling to.

It was then that she showed her hand.

For a time after her discovery she was merely furious with herself; she was twenty-six and no weakling, neither sentiment nor passion should master her. But this phase was brief. Infatuation is not cast out either by reason or pride, and very soon her mind opened to the insidious whisper: "Why not?" What was the career of staff artist, full of liberty, excitement, and[Pg 82] good fellowship as it might be, to marriage with an ambitious man capable of inspiring the wildest love? Sooner or later had she not intended to make just such a marriage?

[Pg 82]

From this inception her deductions followed in logical feminine sequence. If she loved him with a completeness which was both preadamic and neoteric, it was of course because he was consumed with a similar passion; in other words he was her mate. He might be too comfortable and content to have realised it so far, but only one awakening was possible, and hers was the entrancing part to reveal him to himself.

She knew that while by no means a beauty, she was as far from commonplace in colouring at least as in style. Her eyes were an odd opaque olive, their tint so pronounced that it seemed to invade the pale ivory of her skin and the smooth masses of her hair. It was a far more subtle face than American women as a rule possess, and the eyes in 

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