“But—­but—­”

“For there is a devil in him,” she held on, “a most alluring devil, which delights me, on my soul it does, and which, pray God, Frona, you may never know.  For you have no devil; mine matches his and mates.  I am free to confess that the whole thing is only an attraction.  There is nothing permanent about him, nor about me.  And there’s the beauty, the balance is preserved.”

Frona lay back in her chair and lazily regarded her visitor, Lucile waited for her to speak.  It was very quiet.

“Well?” Lucile at last demanded, in a low, curious tone, at the same time rising to slip into her parka.

“Nothing.  I was only waiting.”

“I am done.”

“Then let me say that I do not understand you,” Frona summed up, coldly.  “I cannot somehow just catch your motive.  There is a flat ring to what you have said.  However, of this I am sure:  for some unaccountable reason you have been untrue to yourself to-day.  Do not ask me, for, as I said before, I do not know where or how; yet I am none the less convinced.  This I do know, you are not the Lucile I met by the wood trail across the river.  That was the true Lucile, little though I saw of her.  The woman who is here to-day is a strange woman.  I do not know her.  Sometimes it has seemed she was Lucile, but rarely.  This woman has lied, lied to me, and lied to me about herself.  As to what she said of the man, at the worst that is merely an opinion.  It may be she has lied about him likewise.  The chance is large that she has.  What do you think about it?”

“That you are a very clever girl, Frona.  That you speak sometimes more truly than you know, and that at others you are blinder than you dream.”

“There is something I could love in you, but you have hidden it away so that I cannot find it.”

Lucile’s lips trembled on the verge of speech.  But she settled her parka about her and turned to go.

Frona saw her to the door herself, and How-ha pondered over the white who made the law and was greater than the law.

When the door had closed, Lucile spat into the street.  “Faugh!  St. Vincent!  I have defiled my mouth with your name!” And she spat again.

“Come in.”

At the summons Matt McCarthy pulled the latch-string, pushed the door open, and closed it carefully behind him.

“Oh, it is you!” St. Vincent regarded his visitor with dark abstraction, then, recollecting himself, held out his hand.  “Why, hello, Matt, old man.  My mind was a thousand miles away when you entered.  Take a stool and make yourself comfortable.  There’s the tobacco by your hand.  Take a try at it and give us your verdict.”

“An’ well may his mind be a thousand miles away,” Matt assured himself; for in the dark he had passed a woman on the trail who looked suspiciously like Lucile.  But aloud, “Sure, an’ it’s day-dramin’ ye mane.  An’ small wondher.”