She does not feel the modesty of a young girl; much acting before the public has made her brazen, this midnight beauty with the glowing eyes black as sloes, the pouting lips, the figure of a Hebe.
John Craig may have seen adventures before in his life, and probably has been in many a fix, being fond of spending his vacations in rambling over the wilderness away up in the Michigan peninsula, with a gun on his shoulder; but plainly he has now met the crisis of his whole career.
"Pauline, I am a frank fellow, as you know. It is not in me to dissemble. I am going to speak plainly with you," he says, rising to a sitting posture, and looking the actress full in the eyes.
She moves uneasily, and her cheeks, which were erstwhile tinted with scarlet, grow pallid. Then she sets her teeth and with a smile continues:
"That is right, I hate a deceiver worse than anything else on earth. It was your honest way, John Craig, that first drew me toward you. Yes, speak your mind."
Evidently she is in part prepared for the worst, though she has hoped that the old witchery might be thrown about the young doctor.
"When you treated me in that merciless way, long ago, the regard I felt for you died out of my heart—your spell was broken."
"Ah! John, you have thought so, perhaps, just as I did, but I learned that these affections of ours are deeper than we suspect. I believed I had dropped you forever, but time has taught me what a terrible wrench it must be that would tear the image of John Craig from my heart."
"I am sorry to hear you say so, Pauline, for on my part I have been effectually cured. I even look back and regard our love-making as a foolish, boyish fancy in which neither of us knew our own minds. Why can't you do the same?" he says, calmly.
"I am not built that way—my nature is of the tropical order, for my mother was born in Corsica, you know. Some of these fair English girls may be fickle, but Pauline Potter is the same as when she knew you in Chicago. But, John Craig, this same love can change to hate; it is but a step between the two, and no magician's wand is needed to make the transformation."