She had been speaking of palmistry, and she took his hand in hers, innocently, impersonally, with large eyes lifted inquiringly.  Her breath was on his face; her touch had stirred his senses with a madness he had never felt nor measured in himself before.

“The life-line is here,” she said, coolly, and traced it delicately along his palm with a sea-shell tinted finger.  Like cool delicious fire it spread from nerve to nerve and set aside his reason in a frenzy.  He would seize the berry and feel its stain upon his lips now no matter what!—­

“Paul!”

It was as distinct upon his ear as if the words had been spoken; as startling and calming as a cool hand upon his fevered brow; the sudden entrance of a guest.  He had seized her hands with sudden fervor, and now, almost in the same moment, flung them from him and stood up, a man in full possession of his senses.  “Hark!” he said, and as he spoke a cry broke faintly forth above them, and there was sound of rushing feet.  A frightened maid burst into the room unannounced.

“Oh, Miss Gila, I beg yer pardon, but Master Harry’s got his father’s razor, an’ he’s cut hisself something awful.”

The maid was weeping and wringing her hands helplessly, but Gila stood frowning angrily.  Courtland sprang up the stairs.  In the tumult of his mind he would have rejoiced if the house had been on fire, or a cyclone had struck the place—­anything so he could fling himself into service.  He drew in long, deep breaths.  It was like mountain air to get away from that lurid room into the light once more.  A sense of lost power returned, was over him.  The spell was broken.

He bent over the little boy alertly, grasped the wrist, and stopped the spurt of blood.  The frightened child looked up into his face and stopped crying.

“You should have telephoned for the doctor at once and not made all this fuss in the presence of a guest,” scolded Gila as she came up the stairs.  She looked garish and out of place with her red velvet and jewels in the brilliant light of the white-tiled bathroom.  She stood helplessly by the door, making no move to help Courtland.  The maid was at the telephone, frantically calling for the family physician.

“Hand me those towels,” commanded Courtland, and saw the look of disgust upon Gila’s face as she reluctantly picked her way across the blood-stains.  It struck him that they were the color of her frock.  The stain of the crushed berry.  He moistened his dry lips.  At least the stain was not upon his lips.  He had escaped.  Yet by how narrow a margin.

The girl felt the man’s changed attitude without in the least understanding it.  She thought it had been the cry of the child that made him jump up and fling her hands from him with that sudden “Hark!” in the moment when he had almost yielded.  She did not know that an inner voice had called him.  She only knew that she had lost him for the time, and her vanity was still panting like a wild thing that has lost its prey.