It was truly a very bewitching Opal who finally descended to the salon and joined the party of four masculine incapables who had spent the day in vain search for amusement.  Paul Zalenska rose hastily at her entrance and though she made many attempts to avoid his gaze she was forced at last to meet it.  The electric spark of understanding flashed from eye to eye, and both thrilled in answer to its magnetic call.  In the glance that passed between them was lurking the memory of a kiss.

Opal blushed faintly.  How dare he remember!  Why, his very eyes echoed that triumphant laugh she could not forget.  She stole another glance at him.  Perhaps she had misjudged him—­but—­

She turned to respond to the greeting of her father and the other two gentlemen, and soon found herself seated at the table opposite the Boy she had so recently vowed to shun.  Well, she needn’t talk to him, that was one consolation.  Yet she caught herself almost involuntarily listening for what he would say at this or that turn of the conversation and paying strict—­though veiled—­attention to his words.

It was a strange dinner.  No one felt at ease.  The air was charged with something that all felt too tangibly oppressive, yet none could define, save the two—­who would not.

* * * * *

For Paul the evening was a dismal failure.  Try as he would, he could not catch Opal’s eye again, nor secure more than the most meagre replies even to his direct questions.  She was too French to be actually impolite, but she interposed between them those barriers only a woman can raise.  She knew that Paul was mad for a word with her; she knew that she was tormenting and tantalizing him almost beyond endurance; she felt his impatience in every nerve of her, with that mysterious sixth sense some women are endowed with, and she rejoiced in her power to make him suffer.  He deserved to suffer, she said.  Perhaps he’d have some idea of the proper respect due the next girl he met!  These foreigners! Mon Dieu!  She’d teach him that American girls were a little different from the kind they had in his country, where “what men want, they take,” as he had said.  What kind of heathen was he?

And she watched him surreptitiously from under her long lashes with a curious gleam of satisfaction in her eyes.  She had always known she had this power over men, but she had never cared quite so much about using it before and had been more annoyed than gratified by the effect her personality had had upon her masculine world.

So she smiled at the Count, she laughed with the Count and made eyes most shamelessly at the disgusting old gallant till something in his face warned her that she had reached a point beyond which even her audacity dared not go.

Heavens! how the old monster would devour a woman, she thought, with a thrill of disgust.  There were awful things in his face!