“My dear boy,” she declared, “you have conquered.  I give in.  You have seen through me.  I am a fraud.  I have been trying the old tricks upon you because I am very much a woman, because I want you to be my slave and to do the things I want you to do and live in the world I want you to live in, and I was jealous of this companion for whose sake you would not accept my invitation.  Now I am sane again.  I see that you are not to be treated like other and more foolish young men.  My brother wants you.  He wants you for a companion, he wants you to help him in many ways.  He has been used to rely upon me in such cases.  I have my orders to place you there.”  She pointed to her feet.  “Alas, that I have failed!” she added, laughing once more.  “But, Arnold, we shall be friends?”

“Willingly,” he answered, with an immense sense of relief.  “Only remember this.  I may have wisdom enough to see the lure, but I may not always have strength enough not to take it.  I have spoken to you in a moment of sanity, but—­well, you are the most compellingly beautiful person I ever saw, and compellingly beautiful women have never made a habit of being kind to me, so please—­”

“Don’t do it any more,” she interrupted.  “Is that it?”

“As you like.”

“Now I am going to put a piece of scarlet geranium in your buttonhole, and I am going to take you out into the garden and hand you over to my brother, and tell him that my task is done, that you are my slave, and that he has only to speak and you will go out into the world with a revolver in one hand and a sword in the other, and wear any uniform or fight in any cause he chooses.  Come!”

“You know,” Arnold said, as they left the room, “I don’t know any man I admire so much as your brother, but I am almost as frightened of him as I am of you.”

“One who talks of fear so glibly,” she answered, “seldom knows anything about it.”

“There are as many different sorts of fear as there are different sorts of courage,” he remarked.

“How we are improving!” she murmured.  “We shall begin moralizing soon.  Presently I really think we shall compare notes about the books we have read and the theatres we have been to, and before we are gray-headed I think one of us will allude to the weather.  Now isn’t my brother a wonderful man?  Look at that flush upon Miss Lalonde’s cheeks.  Aren’t you jealous?”

“Miserably!”

Sabatini rose to his feet and greeted his sister after his own fashion, holding both her hands and kissing her on both cheeks.

“If only,” he sighed, “our family had possessed morals equal to their looks, what a race we should have been!  But, my dear sister,—­a question of taste only,—­you should leave Doucet and Paquin at home when you come to my bungalow.”

“You men never altogether understand,” she replied.  “Nothing requires a little artificial aid so much as nature.  It is the piquancy of the contrast, you see.  That is why the decorations of Watteau are the most wonderful in the world.  He knew how to combine the purely, exquisitely artificial with the entirely simple.  Now to break the news to Miss Lalonde!”