He had felt he should lose respect for his intelligence if obliged to hear to the end of her story to know. He had found the clue in the least important of her conquests—in him she called the “city’s choice.” Why had that young Irishman’s blood gushed to his face at the cling of her hand upon his arm, only to recede at the look of eyes so like those of his year-old babe? Why had he calmed into a fine protectorate from one of those sudden physical excitements peculiar to mortal men?
He had got her, had got her at last. And with her he had got the secret of her power—a secret of inestimable value to herself. Oh, she need not look so helpless and perturbed! She need not maintain that pose with him, now that he understood.
“Exactly what is it in me——” the dark head drooped—“that you understand?”
He slashed out at an oleander until it blazed at him its bi-colored fire.
“You were red and white—a human flower more attractively charged than any in my garden of Bad Luck.” He rose to bow before her, low and with no trace of irony. “You were an effect unique among womankind, a combination of unconscious lust and seductive innocence. You appealed with equal force to the bad and the good in that creature as near devil as angel—everyman. I know. Am I not the limit in both?”
From gay to grave his manner again changed when he squared around and at last faced her.
“Never have I destroyed any force that works for me,” he stated. “You have powers for evil which, if developed, might rival my own. It remains with you whether that power increases in you or, through duress, is destroyed. Come, what do you say?”
“What can I say, when I don’t know——”
“Allow me to say it for you, then. As I have explained in part, I need—and need in a hurry—more men souls than I have been able to draft since the conception of my Great Intention. Although I’ve never been above taking any outside help I can get, I always have despised the retroaction upon men of women. Since Eve, the fair have been a sickly lot, more given to good influences than bad. Even the experts developed by modern sex and social problems have shown chiefly stupidity. Not the worst of them but have ideas of bona fide reform back of the rows they’re raising. As for the vampires, real ones always have been rare. That Catherine Cabot, to whom you’ve called my attention, is exceptional.”
“Yes. Dr. Shayle used to say that Catherine couldn’t be ‘reached’.”