He was silent, striving to account for the sudden and mysterious change in her, and yet for some reason unfathomable he dared not ask her the cause. He watched them for a few hands, and then wandered to the piano, playing a few selections in which there was so little heart that it wearied him.

Once or twice he got up to go, but some invisible power seemed to chain him to the place. He could not leave.

It was not until eleven o'clock, when supper was announced, that he got an opportunity of saying a word alone to Carlita.

"And so you are trying to unlearn Puritanism," he said to her, with a little wistful smile upon his lips that made him so singularly handsome. "Do you think you will like the change from saint to satyr?"

"I was never a saint, and there is no reason why I should be a satyr," she answered, forcing herself to smile in return. "Puritanism must be an awfully trying thing to one's friends."

"Not to the friends who love you."

"Our friends never love us unless we are interesting to them."

"Friends who love you because you entertain and amuse them are not worth having. They desecrate the name. And friends who would degrade you are demons in disguise, who are tempting you to eternal ruin, branding your soul with the crest of Satan in order that you may make them laugh."

For a moment Carlita glanced up with a mocking smile upon her lips. Ah, verily was this the "devil quoting scripture." A murderer—the murderer of her lover, prating to her of her soul!

"You ought to go into the Salvation Army," she cried, compelling her tongue to speak lightly. "Are you without sin that you are willing to cast a stone?"