"It would take me some time to give my reasons in full. But I can give you the text of them in a sentence. Our government is a representative one by deliberate choice of its founders. This bill would tend to make it a pure democracy, which would be far too cumbersome for so large a country.""So you'll vote against it next time to save the country," Alice suggested lightly. "Thank you for explaining it." She turned to her cousin with an air of dismissing the subject. "Well, Val. What about the yacht trip to Kloochet Island for Sunday? Shall we go? I have to 'phone the captain to let him know at once.""If you'll promise not to have it rain all the time," the young widow shrugged with a little move. "Perhaps Mr. Farnum could join us? I'm sure uncle would be pleased."Alice seconded her cousin's invitation tepidly, without any enthusiasm. James, with a face which did not reflect his disappointment, took his cue promptly. "Awfully sorry, but I'll be out of the city. Otherwise I should be delighted."Valencia showed a row of dainty teeth in a low ripple of amusement. Alice flashed her cousin one look of resentment and with a sentence ofconventional regret left the room to telephone the sailing master.
Farnum, seeking permission to leave, waited for his hostess to rise from the divan where she nestled.
But Valencia, her fingers laced in characteristic fashion back of her neck, leaned back and mocked his defeat with indolent amused eyes.
"My engagement," he suggested as a reminder. "Poor boy! Are you hard hit?""Your flights of fancy leave me behind. I can't follow," he evaded with an angry flush.
"No, but you wish you could follow," she laughed, glancing at the door through which her cousin had departed. Then, with a demure impudent little cast of her head, she let him have it straight from the shoulder. "How long have you been in love with Alice? And how will you like to see Ned Merrill win?""Am I in love with Miss Frome?" "Aren't you?""If you say so. It happens to be news to me.""As if I believed that, as if you believed it yourself," she scoffed.
Her pretty pouting lips, the long supple unbroken lines of the soft sinuous body, were an invitation to forget all charms but hers. He understood that she was throwing out her wiles, consciously or unconsciously, to strike out from him a denial that would convince her. His mounting vanity drove away his anger. He forgot everything but her sheathed loveliness, the enticement of this lovely creature whose smoldering eyes invited. Crossing the room, he stood behind her divan and looked down at her with his hands on the back of it.
"Can a man care much for two women at the same time?" he asked in a low voice.
She laughed with slow mockery.
Her faint perfume was wafted to his brain. He knew a besieging of the blood. Slowly he leaned forward, holding her eyes till the mockery faded from them. Then, very deliberately, he kissed her.
"How dare you!" she voiced softly in a kind of wonder not free from resentment. For with all her sensuous appeal the daughter of Joe Powerswas not a woman with whom men took liberties.
"By the gods, why shouldn't I dare? We played a game and both of us have lost. You were to beckon and coolly flit, while I followed safely at a distance. Do you think me a marble statue? Do you think me too wooden for the strings of my heart to pulsate? By heaven, my royal Hebe, you have blown the fire in me to life. You must pay forfeit.""Pay forfeit?"
"Yes. I'm your servant no longer, but your lover and your master-- and I intend to marry you.""How ridiculous," she derided. "Have you forgotten Alice?""I have forgotten everything but you--and that I'm going to marry you."She laughed a little tremulously. "You had better forget that too. I'm like Alice. My answer is, 'No, thank you, kind sir.'""And my answer, royal Hebe, is this." His hot lips met hers again in abandonment to the racing passion in him.
"You--barbarian," she gasped, pushing him away. "Perhaps. But the man who is going to marry you."She looked at him with a flash of almost shy curiosity that had the charm of an untasted sensation. "Would you beat me?""I don't know." He still breathed unevenly. "I'd teach you how to live." "And love?" She was beginning to recover her lightness of tone,though the warm color still dabbed her cheeks.
"Why not?" His eyes were diamond bright. "Why not? You have never known the great moments, the buoyant zest of living in the land that belongs only to the Heirs o Life.""And can you guide me there?" The irony in her voice was not untouched with wistfulness.
"Try me."
She laughed softly, stepped to the table, and chose a cigarette. "My friend, you promise impossibilities. I was not born to that incomparable company. To be frank, neither were you. Alice, grant you, belongs there. And that mad cousin of yours. But not we two earth creepers. We're neither of us star dwellers. In the meantime"--she lit her Egyptian andstopped to make sure of her light every moment escaping more definitely from the glamor of his passion--"you mentioned an engagement that was imperative. Don't let me keep you from it."
