Because you are thus let into Miss Hastings' naughty secret, so well veiled behind an air of earnest and almost cold dignity, you must not do her the injustice of thinking her unusually artful. Such artfulness is common enough; it secures husbands by the thousand and by the tens of thousands. No, only in the skill of artfulness was Miss Hastings unusual.
As the long strides of the tall, slender man brought him rapidly nearer, his face came into plain view. A refined, handsome face, dark and serious. He had dark-brown eyes—and Miss Hastings did not like brown eyes in a man. She thought that men should have gray or blue or greenish eyes, and if they were cruel in their love of power she liked it the better.
"Hello, Dave," she cried in a pleasant, friendly voice. She was posed—in the most unconscious of attitudes—upon a rustic bench so that her extraordinary figure was revealed at its most attractive.
The young man halted before her, his breath coming quickly—not altogether from the exertion of his steep and rapid climb. "Jen, I'm mad about you," he said, his brown eyes soft and luminous with passion. "I've done nothing but think about you in the week you've been back. I didn't sleep last night, and I've come up here as early as I dared to tell you—to ask you to marry me."
He did not see the triumph she felt, the joy in having subdued another of these insolently superior males. Her eyes were discreetly veiled; her delightful mouth was arranged to express sadness.
"I thought I was an ambition incarnate," continued the young man, unwittingly adding to her delight by detailing how brilliant her conquest was. "I've never cared a rap about women—until I saw you. I was all for politics—for trying to do something to make my fellow men the better for my having lived. Now—it's all gone. I want you, Jen. Nothing else matters."
As he paused, gazing at her in speechless longing, she lifted her eyes—simply a glance. With a stifled cry he darted forward, dropped beside her on the bench and tried to enfold her in his arms. The veins stood out in his forehead; the expression of his eyes was terrifying.
She shrank, sprang up. His baffled hands had not even touched her. "David Hull!" she cried, and the indignation and the repulsion in her tone and in her manner were not simulated, though her artfulness hastened to make real use of them. She loved to rouse men to frenzy. She knew that the sight of their frenzy would chill her—would fill her with an emotion that would enable her to remain mistress of the situation.
At sight of her aversion his eyes sank. "Forgive me," he muttered. "You make me—CRAZY."
"I!" she cried, laughing in angry derision. "What have I ever done to encourage you to be—impertinent?"