“Oh, he said it, all right.  You know how he is about confidences.”

“No matter.”

Margaret rose slowly, a gradual lifting of her long, supple figure.  Grant watching, wondered why he had never before realized that the sensuous charm of her beauty was irresistible.  “Where were my eyes?” he asked himself.  “She’s beyond any of the women I’ve wasted so much time on.”

She was saying with quiet deliberateness:  “A few days ago, Grant, I’d have jumped at your offer—­to be perfectly frank.  Why shouldn’t I be frank!  I’m sick of cowardly pretenses and lies.  I purpose henceforth to be myself—­almost.”  A look within and a slightly derisive smile.  “Almost.  I shall hesitate and trifle no longer.  I shall marry your friend Craig.”

“You’ll do nothing of the kind,” raged Arkwright.  “If you make it necessary I’ll tell him why you’re marrying him.”

“You may do as you like about that,” replied she.  “He’ll probably understand why you are trying to break off our engagement.”

“You’re very confident of your power over him,” taunted he.

She saw again Craig’s face as he was kissing her.  “Very,” replied she.

“You’ll see.  It’s a mere physical attraction.”

She smiled tantalizingly, her long body displayed against the window-casing, her long, round arms bare below the elbows, her hazel eyes and sensuous lips alluring.  “You, yourself, never thought of proposing to me until I had made myself physically attractive to you,” said she.  “Now—­have I power over you, or not?”

She laughed as his color mounted, and the look she had seen in Craig’s eyes blazed out in his.

“How little physical charm you have for me,” she went on.  “Beside Craig you’re like an electric fan in competition with a storm-wind.  Now, Craig—­” She closed her eyes and drew a long breath.

Arkwright gnawed his lip.  “What a—­a devil you are!” he exclaimed.

“I wonder why it is a woman never becomes desirable to some men until they find she’s desired elsewhere,” she went on reflectively.  “What a lack of initiative.  What timidity.  What an absence of originality.  If I had nothing else against you, Grant, I’d never forgive you for having been so long blind to my charms—­ you and these other men of our set who’ll doubtless be clamorous now.”

“If you’d been less anxious to please,” suggested he bitterly, “and more courageous about being your own real self, you’d not have got yourself into this mess.”

“Ah—­but that wasn’t my fault,” replied she absently.  “It was the fault of my training.  Ever since I can remember I’ve been taught to be on my guard, lest the men shouldn’t like me.”  In her new freedom she looked back tranquilly upon the struggle she was at last emancipated from, and philosophized about it.  “What a mistake mothers make in putting worry about getting a husband into their daughters’ heads.  Believe me, Grant, that dread makes wretched what ought to be the happiest time of a girl’s life.”