“I’ll introduce you to Campion,” I said, “and doubtless he’ll be able to find something for you to do.  He has made a science of the matter.  I’ll take you down to see him.”

“Will you?”

“Certainly,” said I. There was a pause.  Then an idea struck me.  “I wonder, my dear Lola, whether you could apply that curious power you have over savage animals to the taming of the more brutal of humans.”

“I wonder,” she said thoughtfully.

“I should like to see you seize a drunken costermonger in the act of jumping on his wife by the scruff of the neck, and reduce him to such pulp that he sat up on his tail and begged.”

“Oh, Simon!” she exclaimed reproachfully.  “I quite thought you were serious.”

“So I am, my dear,” I returned quickly, “as serious as I can be.”

She laughed.  “Do you remember the first day you came to see me?  You said that I could train any human bear to dance to whatever tune I pleased.  I wonder if the same thought was at the back of your head.”

“It wasn’t.  It was a bad and villainous thought.  I came under the impression that you were a dangerous seductress.”

“And I’m not?”

Oh, that spring day, that delicious tingle in the air, that laughing impertinence of the budding trees in the park through which we were then driving, that enveloping sense of fragrance and the nearness and the dearness of her!  Oh, that overcharge of vitality!  I leaned my head to hers so that my lips nearly touched her ear.  My voice shook.

“You’re a seductress and a witch and a sorcerer and an enchantress.”

The blood rose to her dark face.  She half closed her eyes.

“What else am I?” she murmured.

But, alas!  I had not time to answer, for the brougham stopped at the gates of the Zoological Gardens.  We both awakened from our foolishness.  My hand was on the door-handle when she checked me.

“What’s the good of a mind if you can’t change it?  I don’t feel in a mood for wild beasts to-day, and I know you don’t care to see me fooling about with them.  I would much rather sit quiet and talk to you.”

With a woman who wants to sacrifice herself there is no disputing.  Besides, I had no desire to dispute.  I acquiesced.  We agreed to continue our drive.

“We’ll go round by Hampstead Heath,” she said to the chauffeur.  As soon as we were in motion again, she drew ever so little nearer and said, in her lowest, richest notes, and with a coquetry that was bewildering on account of its frankness: 

“What were we talking of before we pulled up?”

“I don’t know what we were talking of,” I said, “but we seem to have trodden on the fringe of a fairy-tale.”

“Can’t we tread on it again?” She laughed happily.

“You have only to cast the spell of your witchery over me again.”

She drew yet a little nearer and whispered:  “I’m trying to do it as hard as I can.”