“What she said was this:  ’I’ve sent for you because, if you keep on, you’re going to win.  No, don’t get up.  Before you keep on, I want to tell you something about myself—­about what I believe with all my soul.  I don’t have to tell you that I’m a good woman; you know it.  The first time you saw me dance you were rather disgusted, weren’t you?  I nodded.  ’What do you think of my dancing now?”

“I remember my answer to that.  It was:  ’You possess people gradually, you hold them forever.  It’s more than personality with you, it’s power.’

“Her eyes were fastened on me.  They drew mine.  ‘That’s right,’ she said; ‘look at me.  I want you to look at me.  You see I’m an ugly woman.’  I cried out in protest, and I meant it.  Her face went suddenly hard.  ’You fool,’ she said, ‘say that I’m pretty—­say it now!’ And I cried out at her, ’Not when you look like that.  But you can assume beauty.  You know it.’

“She seemed to pause in her thoughts at that and smiled.  ’Can I—­for you?’ she asked in a way that made her divine.  Then she jerked herself back.  ‘I’m an ugly woman.  My body is wonderful.  Look!’ She raised her long arms, which were bare, gave a half-turn, and glanced at me over her shoulder.  An apparently simple movement, but it was consummate in grace and display.  ‘You see?’ she said, with a flashing smile.  Then she turned and stood stolidly.  ’I didn’t have a body worth speaking of once.  What I’ve got I made—­every bit of it.’

“She sat down sidewise on a chair, folded her arms on the back of it, and looked at me over them.  ’I have that power you were speaking of.  Do you know just in what consists a woman’s power over a man?  I’ll tell you:  in keeping eternally just one thing that he wants.’

“She paused a long time on that, then she went on:  ’Some women hold their own in the world and their men by beauty, others by wit, others by culture, breeding, and occasionally there’s a woman clever enough to hold her place and her man by wealth.  I’ve got none of these things.  I’ve got only one great gift of God by which I hold my power.  When that’s gone, all is gone.  Wise people have told me so.  I know it is true.’  She rose slowly, came and stood close beside me.  ’It’s—­it’s this—­that I’m still my own.  Do you want to—­to rob me?”

Leighton paused, staring into the fire.

“That was the time,” he said, “I went off on my longest shooting-trip.  I never saw her again.”  He looked up.  Vi was very pale.

“You have been cruel—­cruel to me,” she said.

Leighton sprang to his feet and started walking up and down.

“I have not,” he said.  “The trouble with you women is you’re forever wanting to have your cake and eat it, too.  If you thought I was going to comfort you with sophist assurances that there’s a way out of paying the price for the kind of life you’ve led, you were just wrong.  What I’m trying to do is to give you a prescription for an individual sick soul, not a well one.”