At the thought of the ease with which he had allowed himself to be ensnared, his muscles tightened.  It was as though the iron in the man took shape, shook off the veneer, encased him like a coat of mail.  Hitherto, in those remote Alaska solitudes, this would have meant the calling to account of some transgressor in his camp.  He began to sift for the prime element in this woman’s wonderful personality.  It was not physical beauty alone; neither was it that mysterious magnetism, almost electrical, yet delicately responsive as a stringed instrument.  One of these might have kept that tremendous hold on Weatherbee near, but on Weatherbee absent through those long, breaking years, hardly.  It was something deeper; something elusive yet insistent that had made it easier for him to brave out his defeat alone in the Alaska wilderness than come back to face.  Clearly she was not just the handsome animal he had believed her to be.  Had she not called herself proud?  Had he not seen her courage?  She had a spirit to break.  A soul!

CHAPTER XIII

“A LITTLE STREAK OF LUCK”

It was not the first time Jimmie Daniels had entertained the Society Editor at the Rathskeller, and that Monday, though he had invited her to lunch with him in the Venetian room, she asked him, as was her habit, to “order for both.”

“Isn’t there something special you’d like?” he asked generously; “something you haven’t had for a long time?”

“No.  You are so much of an epicure—­for a literary person—­I know it’s sure to be something nice.  Besides,” and the shadow of a smile drifted across her face, “it saves me guessing the state of your finances.”

A critic would have called Geraldine Atkins too slender for her height, and her face, notwithstanding its girlish freshness, hardly pretty.  The chin, in spite of its dimple, was too strong; the lips, scarlet as a holly berry, lacked fullness and had a trick of closing firmly over her white teeth.  Even her gray-blue eyes, which should have been a dreamer’s, had acquired a direct intensity of expression as though they were forever seeking the inner, real you.  Still, from the rolling brim of her soft felt hat to the hem of her brown tailor-made, that cleared the ankles of trim brown shoes, she was undeniably chic and in the eyes of Jimmie Daniels “mighty nice.”

He was longer than usual filling out the card, and the waiter hesitated thoughtfully when he had read it, then be glanced from the young man to his companion with a comprehensive smile and hurried away.  There was chilled grapefruit in goblets with cracked ice, followed by bouillon, oysters, and a delectable young duck with toast.  But it was only when the man brought a small green bottle and held it for Jimmie to approve the label that his guest began to arch her brows.