He looked at her queerly but she met his gaze with eyes as audacious as her words. Over at the piano Grace was playing with much tender feeling one of Chopin's delicious nocturnes; before the open fireplace, Carter, Brevoort and McVey were discussing the possibilities of a well-managed ranch. The big room with its happy combination of modern and primitive amenities was the epitome of cheerfulness and comfort.
"Original? No man can say anything that is that. The possibilities were exhausted centuries ago. Even. Sin is stereotyped. There have always been women like you and men like me! What on earth could a man in my position say to a woman in yours that would be acceptably wicked?"
She smiled inscrutably; there was no abstraction in his manner now. "And yet you are so bold in other things!" she said, tauntingly. "To the brave all things are possible."
From far out in the darkness came the weird, long-drawn, mournful howl of some gaunt timber wolf foraging with his mate. It was very faint and the others, deeply engrossed in music and money matters, were unconscious of it. At its eerie repetition she laid her hand lightly on his arm.
"Listen! That is something new to me at all events. What can it be?"
"Only 'the voice of one crying in the wilderness,'" he whimsically quoted. "A gray wolf calling to his mate." He laid his hand restrainingly on hers and leaned so close that his hot breath swept her cheek.
"I wonder how brave, or wicked, you could really be, you wonderful creature!" he murmured, insidiously. Her color heightened but she made no reply. The pulse was very distinct in the veins of the soft little warm hand lying tremulously beneath his. "Listen! There it is again, the call of the Wild, the voice out of the Primitive inviting strong souls back into the boundless realm of the great First Cause. Are you brave enough to accept it, to go out and be the most gloriously fierce wolf of them all?"
"Why," she exclaimed, with a labored vivacity that deceived neither of them, "that is certainly original!"
"With—say with me for a running mate!" His voice was scarcely audible.
"And that is decidedly wicked!" She gently withdrew her hand. But there was small reproof in the seductive smile playing about her red lips. With the arrogance of the youthfully virile and strong he glanced contemptuously at the slight figure before the fireplace, old and worn and gray, debilitated with the fierce excesses of the chase after money; then he looked at the radiant beauty of the voluptuous young woman beside him and laughed grimly at the painful disparity between man and wife.