When, after a time, she flung back her head and pushed him away, her face, her neck, her shoulders were suffused with a coral pinkness and her eyes were misty.

“You must be careful!” she whispered in a tone that was less of a remonstrance than an invitation.  “Remember, we’re making shadowgraphs for our neighbors.  That’s the worst of a tent at night—­one silhouettes one’s very thoughts.”

“Then put out the light,” he muttered, thickly; but she slipped away, and her moist lips mocked him in silent laughter.

“The idea!  What in the world has come over you?  Why, you’re the most impetuous boy—­”

“Boy!” Pierce grimaced his dislike of the word.  “Don’t be motherly; don’t treat me as if I had rompers on.  You’re positively maddening to-night.  I never saw you like this.  Why, your hair”—­he ran his hands through that silken shower once more and pressed it to his face—­“it’s glorious!”

The Countess slipped into a combing-jacket; then she seated herself on the springy couch of pine branches over which her fur robe was spread, and deftly caught up her long runaway tresses, securing them in place with a few mysterious twists and expert manipulations.

“Boy, indeed!” he scoffed, flinging himself down beside her.  “That’s over with, long ago.”

“Oh, I don’t feel motherly,” she asserted, still suffused with that telltale flush.  “Not in the way you mean.  But you’ll always be a boy to me—­and to every other woman who learns to care for you.”

“Every other woman?” Pierce’s eyes opened.  “What a queer speech.  There aren’t going to be any other women.”  He looked on while she lighted a cigarette, then after a moment he inquired, “What do you mean?”

She answered him with another question.  “Do you think I’m the only woman who will love you?”

“Why—­I haven’t given it any thought!  What’s the difference, as long as you’re the only one I care for?  And I do love you, I worship—­”

“But there will be others,” she persisted, “There are bound to be.  You’re that kind.”

“Really?”

The Countess nodded her head with emphasis.  “I can read men; I can see the color of their souls.  You have the call.”

“What call?” Pierce was puzzled.

“The—­well, the sex-call, the sex appeal.”

“Indeed?  Am I supposed to feel flattered at that?”

“By no means; you’re not a cad.  Men who possess that attraction are spoiled sooner or later.  You don’t realize that you have it, and that’s what makes you so nice, but—­I felt it from the first, and when you feel it you’ll probably become spoiled, too, like the others.”  This amused Phillips, but the woman was in sober earnest.  “I mean what I say.  You’re the kind who cause women to make fools of themselves—­old or young, married or single.  When a girl has it—­she’s lost.”

“I’m not sure I understand.  At any rate, you haven’t made a fool of yourself.”