“That is nonsense. I am sure you are too strong-minded to yield to such a temptation,” Otho replied, reassuringly.
St. George could not help listening to the sound of the musical voice and watching the beautiful profile when it turned toward him in her animated talk.
Heavens, how lovely she was! What eyes, what lips, what dimples, what a mesh of curly, golden hair in which to entangle a man’s throbbing heart! And yet it was not simply her beauty that inthralled him, and he knew it. She had that psychical charm we call personal magnetism, that is like the perfume to the flower and seems to endow it with a soul.
He heard her continue, almost defiantly, as if annoyed:
“I wish they would not talk about it, for it makes me angry. Why should I kill myself? I’m young and gay, and, in a way, happy! And yet,” musingly, “I suppose, after all, that the terrible taint of that mania is in my blood. I am not superstitious, but perhaps it may conquer me after all, who knows? Do you suppose I shall ever kill myself?”
“I hope not. You would break a dozen hearts if you did, mine among the rest,” Otho replied, banteringly, with a killing glance.
She continued, meditatively:
“They will go on expecting me to commit suicide, of course, and always selecting the old farm as the scene of the fifth tragedy. Why should I not choose some other scene for the final act? This river, say,” pointing to it as it rippled below the bank, dark and deep and dangerous in its beauty.
Laughing, she rose to her feet, and he said:
“It seems that fate always demands the sacrifice within the gates of the grim old place.”