“And be denied the taste of him now?” Satan licked his lips. “Is this a trick, she-fiend, to wrest him from my clutch? Have a care lest you, too, become disliked!”
“I am not afraid of that.” With a laugh that came strangely from her lips—luring, assured, golden—she plucked the rose-bud off her ankle and, from tip-toe, flicked it against his cheek. While placing it in his buttonhole, she added: “You brand your warriors. Wear my brand, the scarlet bud. You are mine, as I may be yours if only——” She drew away her laughing lips just as, almost, he had accepted their challenge.
“Courtesan!” he accused. “What has inspired you, all at once, with the best way to intrigue me—to make me doubt your truth and fear your artifice?”
“Perhaps I have not wished to intrigue you, as you say, before. Perhaps my artifice has been in concealing myself. Ah, Pluto, that even you have not guessed my trickery! I wished to wait until sure of my own mind. Yours is so dominant, it is hard to be sure. Since what you have said this morning, I am ready to stand revealed. You have aroused what you see in my eyes. You should be the last to doubt. This is myself. The other was all pose—my best asset on Earth.”
“You are worse than I thought,” he exulted. “I was beginning almost to believe in your decency, so consistently did you act. Then, after all, I am right?”
Again she laughed, this time with him. “Aren’t you always right, you perpetual wrong? Of course there is no right or wrong to what I’m asking you. Call it my caprice. I’ve done a great deal to please you. Do one thing for me.”
“Make it something else, then.”
“Something else is never what one wishes.”
“But I suspect your request of being something more than a caprice.”
“That even I cannot deceive you!” With the chagrined exclamation, she thrust her arm in his and drew him aside. Her head drooped, as if from embarrassment. In a low, hesitant voice, she confessed: “You are too keen for me. This request does matter to me. The truth is, I don’t want my ex-only, as you call him, down here. Don’t you know enough of woman’s nature to appreciate how I feel? I can’t help the way I was born. I am a harlot at heart. Sooner or later the bad habit of loving the old love might distract me from the new. You saw last night that any conquest has its charms for me. Why not—-”