"Mustn't like you any more, or you won't like me as much!"
It was Woman's dearly-bought wisdom——but he laughed at it until his teeth gleamed across his vivid face.
She? Do anything he would not like? Even if she loved him and showed it, even that could not cool this man off, now he knew. The chit had got him going sure enough. Whatever she did or said only added to her attraction, to her long-contested, her triumphant, her Disturbing Charm!
POSTSCRIPT
THE CHARM CONFESSED
With regard to the three words with which the last chapter closed:
The Disturbing Charm....
What was its story, after all, apart from the tangled stories of those people into whose lives it twined its thread of rose colour?
Perhaps it was all summed up in a letter that came, one February morning of Nineteen-Eighteen, to Professor Howel-Jones.