her own eyes, and he had gone through fire to attain this clearness of vision.  What could be said?  Zora the magnificent and self-reliant found not a word, though her heart was filled with pity.  She was brought face to face with a ridiculous soul-tragedy, remote from her poor little experience of life.  It was no time to act the beneficent goddess.  She became self-conscious, fearful to speak lest she might strike a wrong note of sympathy.  She wanted to give the man so much, and she could give him so little.

“I’m dying to help you,” she said, rather piteously.  “But how can I?”

“Zora,” he said huskily.

She glanced up at him and he held her eyes with his, and she saw how she could help him.

“No, don’t—­don’t.  I can’t bear it.”

She rose and turned away.  “Don’t let us change things.  They were so sweet before.  They were so strange—­your wanting me as a sort of priestess—­I used to laugh—­but I loved it all the time.”

“That’s why I said I’ve been a fool, Zora.”

The bell of the telephone connected with his manager’s office rang jarringly.  He seized the transmitter in anger.

“How dare you ring me up when I gave orders I was to be undisturbed?  I don’t care who wants to see me.  I’ll see nobody.”

He threw down the transmitter.  “I’m very sorry,” he began.  Then he stopped.  The commonplace summons from the outer world brought with dismaying suddenness to his mind the practical affairs of life.  He was a ruined man.  The thought staggered him.  How could he say to Zora Middlemist:  “I am a beggar.  I want to marry you”?

She came to him with both hands outstretched, her instinctive gesture when her heart went out, and used his Christian name for the first time.

“Clem, let us be friends—­good friends—­true, dear friends, but don’t spoil it all for me.”

When a woman, infinitely desired, pleads like that with glorious eyes, and her fragrance and her dearness are within arm’s length, a man has but to catch her to him and silence her pleadings with a man’s strength, and carry her off in triumph.  It has been the way of man with woman since the world began, and Sypher knew it by his man’s instinct.  It was a temptation such as he had never dreamed was in the world.  He passed through a flaming, blazing torment of battle.

“Forget what I have said, Zora.  We’ll be friends, if you so wish it.”

He pressed her hands and turned away.  Zora felt that she had gained an empty victory.

“I ought to be going,” she said.

“Not yet.  Let us sit down and talk like friends.  It’s many weary months since I have seen you.”

She remained a little longer and they talked quietly of many things.  On bidding her good-by he said half playfully: 

“I’ve often wondered why you have taken up with a fellow like me.”

“I suppose it’s because you’re a big man,” said Zora.